Fostex D160 What's the best back up format?

[Rockchick]

My Fostex D160' s hard drive is getting kind of full. What's the best format to use to back up, DAT or JAZ discs?
Are there any major advantages or disadvantages in using one or the other?
When I transfer E.G. 16 tracks of data back to the D160, once it's been archived, Does it get put back onto the separate 16 tracks that they originally came from?

[Twitch]

Yes to your answer about the 16 tracks everything your put in will be the exact same when you take it out.. as for the backup media.. I would say JAZ drives cuz you will have less maintence..but dats are more common than jaz drives and sound better due to ADA conversion.. How you every thought about backing up to PC? you will have plenty of room and more flexability.

[carelessorc]

If your D160 does DAT backups the same way as my VF160 then forget it. It's a two tracks at a time export system so if your song has 16 tracks it takes 8 times the song length to back up. Same again to restore. As I see it, backup to PC would suffer from the same difficulties. If your D160 has an ADAT out you could transfer 8 tracks at a time to PC, if you have an ADAT input on the PC and multitrack recording software.
I would go for the Jaz.
Can the D160 save tracks as WAV files? If so you could transfer them to to PC via a Jaz disk. That way you be getting cheaper storage (Jaz disks are expensive). I don't think ADA conversion is a factor in this (the data remains in the digital domain).

'Orc

[Twitch]

How ya doing orc? I didn't know your also on this forum.. that's cool

[carelessorc]

Hey Cairnsy, I'm very well old chap, how are you?
I'm on all the main VF forums - but not necessarily as 'Orc

Sorry Rockchick, my reply missed your last question: as far as I know your machine will restore the tracks to the original place when restoring from backup.

'Orc

[Twitch]

I'm doing well, how many fostex forums is there do you know?

[PeteHalo]

Easiest method to 'backup' is to buy a new HD and keep the old one as backup. Today the IDE HDs are so cheap that it makes no economical sense to backup onto some other media not no mention that IMHO it's a complete waste of time.

I just recently replaced the original 10GB disk of my D160 with a new 40GB Samsung Spinpoint disk and while the new disk is much bigger it's also much much much quieter than the old one which alone is a good reason to replace the original disk. Hardest part of replacing the disk was to figure out how to open the lock as my D160 didn't come with the key to release the caddy when I bought it second hand but I was pretty lucky to have a spare key to the lock of my bike laying around that fit the lock of the caddy on D160 perfectly. Now it takes about two minutes to swap the disks (or couple of seconds if you have a spare caddy) if you need to work on the old one and that's lightning fast compared to downloading the song data from some backup media.

FYI You need to upgrade the firmware of D160 to version 2.13 to use a HD bigger than 32GB. My D160 is V2.10 so I had to limit the capacity of the disk to 32GB (there's an extra jumper on the disk for that) to use it in my machine.

[carelessorc]

Cairns: I regularly visit VF16.com, hostboard,com and this one.
Pete you raise an interesting point but I think there are two separate issues: 1 Backup and 2 Creating space for new work. Your alternate drive solution addresses issue 2, but not issue 1. A lot of users to Fostex forums (or any computer forum) relate tales of dying Hard Disks, which can carry hours of hard work with them to the grave! A general rule of thumb is that your data is not secure if it's only in one place. Some backup methods are quite quick, and worth it for the peace of mind. Does the D160 have SCSI, or maybe can be connected to 2 drives at once?

'Orc

[ausrock]

I don't know if you guys noticed, but the date of Rockchicks original post is virtually 5 years ago.................I wonder if she ever found an answer.

[carelessorc]

Oops! No I hadn't spotted that one - just the date of Cairns reply!
Good discussion anyway!

'Orc

[Twitch]

I didn't even bother to think about the date.. Sorry everyone

[ausrock]

Not to worry..............

I'm just setting up to archive material on my D160 after a h/drive showed signs of crapping itself.

After considering the recommended options and having experienced too many h/drive deaths in PC's, not to mention the fact that burnt CD's, etc., have been known to lose data, I am going to analogue (1" 16 trk) as a back-up and archival medium................looked after, tapes offer the best, reliable long term storage solution.

[kiwisegg]

Indeed backing up is crucial for long term sanity. I have had the d160 for a few years and have been simply using a new drive each time I need more space. No backups. My bad. Just 2 days ago, the HD I am currently using, which has months of work on it, apparently crashed.

Is this a sign of a dead HD anyone? When booting up, the drive emits a loud click, and then goes silent. Cannot access songs anymore. I was able to boot Ok once amid the crashes and re-boots, but it seems to be dead. The old HDs (in storage) work just fine.

Is this drive lost forever?

Thanks, Pat.