Hard Drive backup VS DVD backup

Myriad_Rocker

Myriad_Rocker

New member
What do you think is the best way of backing up information? I suppose the hard drive could go bad before the DVD's do but external hard drives are a lot larger than DVD's.

What are your opinions/choice?
 
I think that DVD is the most economical and secure. Sure hard disk holds more but how much do you really need?

When backing up it seems impractical to backup EVERYTHING (aka OS, programs, other useless junk.) The data is what is important (.wav, .mps, pics, message, address book, favorties, etc.).

Even the biggest recording projects I've ever done could be saved onto a 5GB DVD disk.
 
The Smokehand album takes up quite a few DVDs, but I also have it on two seperate hard drives!

Do both ;)

If you back up on to hard drive - keep the drive well away from anything magnetic.
DVD is a good storage format - but can be a bit flaky depending on the quality of the media.

I think the main problem with backing up music data is that it's potentially hard to retrieve in the future. Unfortunatly we're reliant on software companies to keep making software that is backwards compatible, when it's in their interests to do the opposite (thereby forcing us to upgrade).

For this reason it's probably a good idea to keep an old computer hanging around with some old software on it.

I guess this is another area where tape scores over digital formats. You can almost always read a tape at least once before it disintegrates. I think that's what happened with the recent Led Zep dvd. On first playback of some of the tapes, they were turning to dust behind the play head :o
 
I do both. However, I rarely have a project that will fit on a single DVD. Most of my projects are around 12-20 gigs. I usually put a project on a removable drive, and on DVD. One of the most important things that I do though is to remove the removable drive completely from the tower after backing up a project, and making sure that the DVD's are stored in good cases and NEVER get used so they don't get scratched. The other thing I do is give the band a DVD backup of their project. This is my failsafe. If anything happens to my stuff, than they should still have theirs. If not, then I no longer have to take all the responsibility:)
 
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