OT: Back up your hard drive...NOW!!!

**James W.G. Smith** · 04-17-2005, 02:00 AM

I just lost 4 years worth of work because my secondary hard drive decided that it wanted to die. On top of it all, I have been too much of an idiot to keep regular back-ups. So learn from my mistake and burn some DVDs right now

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James W.G. Smith

**A_Sapp** · 04-17-2005, 02:14 AM

Yup - I lost all my sequencing files to all my works a couple months ago. Was kind of heartbroken actually - now I can't translate it to notation... I also had numerous ideas I composed for later use. GONE.

**FredProgGH** · 04-17-2005, 02:59 AM

Lost a nearly finished album in a crash about two years ago. It's a lesson you never forget!!

**fictionmusic** · 04-17-2005, 03:15 AM

Here's a trick: don't have too large a hard drive

and you'll have no choice but to back things up. Seriously though, I lost a show I was working on 7 years ago and took so much abuse for it, I have never let it happen again.
Now I copy all files to CD or DVD and make backups of those. I also have a lot of old scsi drives that I use as extra back-ups now that I don't use them for anything else.

A buddy of mine tells me that a lot of times you can do a data recovery on lost drives, do you think that might work?

**FredProgGH** · 04-17-2005, 03:17 AM

Originally Posted by fictionmusic

A buddy of mine tells me that a lot of times you can do a data recovery on lost drives, do you think that might work?

It's true, it's amazing what those services can recover- but you have to want it. They can charge up to several grand.

**Theodor** · 04-17-2005, 03:33 AM

This is so bad and scary , losing your data !!!!!!!
I have everything on cd's , on my hard-drive, and on my brother's slave hard-drive ...... now i gotta fear about a fire

**T Parks** · 04-17-2005, 03:58 AM

A few years back I lost a mass of scores I'd taken an entire summer to do on Sibelius. This was before CD-RW came into play and I was too stupid to back up my disks. Now its a religious practise at the end of every session and I take the backup HD/s or disks home with me to an archive cupboard.

**Daryl** · 04-17-2005, 04:27 AM

Originally Posted by T Parks

A few years back I lost a mass of scores I'd taken an entire summer to do on Sibelius. This was before CD-RW came into play and I was too stupid to back up my disks. Now its a religious practise at the end of every session and I take the backup HD/s or disks home with me to an archive cupboard.

In the olden days I used to back everything up on floppies and store duplicate copies in at least three different locations. I must admit that I am a bit lazier now, but when my hard drive ate itself last year there was nothing on it that I couldn't find elsewhere....! I am now saving everything to extra external USB drives whilst on a project, and when it is finished I just make an extra copy and file the drive in a store. As most projects are 40 Gb or less it is very cheap to do and much quicker then multiple DVD copies (of which I always make one, just in case...).

Daryl

**evaclear** · 04-17-2005, 05:06 AM

Good to know i'm not alone on the excessive back up 'bug'

No client wants to hear about how their work got lost/destroyed, no matter how unlikely

**csduke** · 04-17-2005, 07:38 AM

Originally Posted by James W.G. Smith

I just lost 4 years worth of work ...
James W.G. Smith

I lost a drive a while back. I called a few data recovery services. While their quotes were expensive, they would have been well worth the cost. i ended up using a PC app called RecoverIT and it was able to recover all of my important data (though not 100% of the data). In most cases, you or an expert can get your data back. Good luck.