Backup Drives

[jgourd]

I am putting together a multi-track system that is going to be PC based using either the MOTU i24 or the 2496 interface box. All of my recording will be in live situations where I may need to record 3 hours of material on somewhere between 12 and 18 tracks recorded simultaniously. This means that I will have huge quantities of "Master Data" to store if I want to keep the unmixed masters.

I began looking into tape drives and found that they and their media are just too expensive for me to justify buying one now.

My current thinking is that perhaps a used ADAT deck and the ADAT litepipe jack on the MOTU card is what I should use. Can I use a single 8 track ADAT to backup 16 tracks if I dump 8 tracks at a time. Will I be able to get all 16 tracks back in a way that I can get them to sync up in my software easily?

 

[ola]

Hmm, three hours of 18 tracks in 24/96 is pretty darn much. We're talking close to 60GB per session.

If you dither it down to 16/48, it's "only" 20GB per session so that may be your only realistic option. Then you can fit two sessions on a $90 40GB disc. That's about as cheap as high capacity tape /well, not really) but w/o the expense of the tape drive.

 

[jgourd]

The i24 doesn't do 96KHz so 48 is what I would be using if I buy that unit. Still, it is a lot.

 

[ola]

Then it's 30GB per session. Check the prices for those cheaper "30GB when compressed" drives. Maybe they're cheap enough. Pricewatch says $27 per tape.

Tape devices like the Onstream Echo30 IDE aren't too expensive. Keep in mind that the transfer rate is less than 1MB/s in compressed mode for this specific device. Probably as low as 0.5MB/s. It takes a while to do the backup... About 17 hours

 

[skippy]

Well, there are really two types of backup to worry about: daily working backups, and archival/disaster-recovery backups. You might consider doing two completely different types of backup for these.

I have an unusual setup, in that the data for my real-world business and the data from the studio reside on the same network. Thus, doing very good backups is simply a cost of doing business for me. I've recently changed my backup strategy to do nightly backups to a Maxtor network-attached-storage box (instead of a tape jukebox), and to only dump data to tape once a month for disaster recovery purposes. Those tapes are then stored offsite in my safe deposit box.

The Maxtor NAS box was remarkably cheap for the amount of storage it provides, and since it runs its own OS (based on a Linux kernel, I think) it seems to be unaffected by the usual Windows phase-of-the-moon disasters. On a 100baseT network it is quite fast, and it's nice to have a fresh copy of all the audio data online and ready for instant recovery: I've made use of that a few times, as I learn the subtleties of Cubase.

All backup costs money, but it provides a priceless safety-net. In short, it is worth the cost, whatever that might be. There's nothing worse than realizing that months of work, and many irreplaceable inspirations, have disappeared forever as the result of a single Blue Screen Of Death incident...

The other nice thing about setting up a good backup strategy is that as soon as you set it up, the perverse nature of the universe will arrange for you to stop making as many mistakes that result in data loss.
I never will understand that. (;-)