Backups/Redundancy with projects

Question

I am curious to what everyones backup methods /archiving methods are for projects. I have had a scare or two recently involving data. I had things backed up, but my organization and method of back ups made it very time consuming to go through and find everything. I am trying a new type of setup which is as follows. I am a windows user, I have 5 Internal Hard drives.

Main drive

• Boot Drive is a 80gb SSD where my OS and Pro tools and other key programs run.

Programs/Documents Drive 600g

• Run my extra programs and keep my documents.

Projects 1 TB - This is where my pro tools projects are located inclusive of everything except video for the project. I usually drop that onto the programs/documents drive

Media

• Where my sound fx library sits. Both my personal recorded library and the libraries I own. I backup my personal SFX using crashplan to the cloud.

Hot Swap Sata Bay 1TB I use this drive as my backup/archive bay. Basically I keep my Projects Drive Mirrored to this using different methods, none are really seamless and automatic, I manually copy some, have used robocopy utilities, and am currently doing a copy using a program called BART. This drive is basically called ARCHIVE_001...002...003 etc.

Once Projects finish, I have exact copies of everything on that archive drive, I make DVDs of the stems and prints, and the client gets copies of it also. Then Every so often, I remove the completed projects from my projects drive and fill up the archive drive, pull it out and put in a fresh HDD and start all over.

This method is pretty flawed, but it is at least something. I have been researching some forms of server based backup or NAS backups. I am liking this idea as it offers large ability to expand, and older rackmount servers for sata raid data backup are pretty cheap on ebay.

I have also thought of the idea of using something like a drobo , but I really am not fond of the idea of another usb hardrive enclosure laying around.

The backup programs I have seen, seem to make their own image files, and that is not what I am looking for, just want an identical mirror, I guess Raid 1, but I want to just be able to have one of those drives and it just work rather than a rebuild process when 1 drive is gone. Maybe I am missing something, but I am curious as to what everyones process is from Drive Management (Physical) to the software used to automate the process and allow you to sleep at night.

MG

Answer 1

I did a writeup last year on my system and strategy here; first part describing an overview of hard drives and their usage can be seen here.

Answer 2

Here the setup in my Mac Pro:

System Drive (apps and system data). Backed up to my local NAS using Time Machine.

Audio Drive (current projects). Sync'd to the cloud (Sugar Sync)

Library (2) 2 TB drives (4TB Raid). Two sets of back ups. Using (2) 2 TB for each set (not raid). Both backups kept offsite at separate locations (I can retrieve either backup quickly). I use an external drive dock and sync data to these drives using Chronosync.

Answer 3

Since you're a Windows user, you may want to look into a free Microsoft program called SyncToy. I use it for differential backups of my project and effects drive. Other than that, I just keep the standard Windows based backups of personal files (bookmarks, settings, etc.) on a separate drive. I've found that, when necessary, a clean install typically works better than restoring from a system image (at least with an SSD as my main OS drive). It wouldn't be a bad idea to keep a fresh install on a separate drive, that way you could just swap it out if you run into an issue, and save reinstalling your files until a given project is over.

Answer 4

i swear by Allway Sync http://allwaysync.com/ to the point where i boot into windows to do my backups (haven't found anything as good- or cheap for mac)