How reliable is copying wav files to another computer?

B

bobbo

New member
I've been reading about storage problems and all, and am getting to the point where I'll need to make more room on my hard drive.
I've copied all the wav files to the older computer via lan connection (both computers are hooked up to a linksys router). I've been working on a bunch of songs that I'm sending to a friend unfinished, putting the unfinished stereo tunes on a cd. He then uses his digital boss recorder and adds whatever he wants to those tunes, then he will send them back to me on cd, where I can finish them on my computer.
My question is:
I'm kind of afraid to delete the wav files on the computer that I'm using to record with, even though I've copied them all to the other computer (which has a lot of disk space). I'm not sure if I'll have to do some editting or not after hearing what my friend has done, so I'd need to bring the wav files back to my good computer to do the editting.
I'm running out of space, and in a few weeks I'll need a lot of space when we record a bunch of drum tracks, so I will need to get rid of these "possibly" unfinished files.
I really don't want to play every single wav file on the older computer just to see if its all there. It would be hundreds.
So, how safe can I feel that if I were to delete the files on the recording computer, that the files I copied to the older computer would still be usable if I were to copy them back to the recording computer? I'm using win98.
 
In the past 4 years I haven't had any problems retrieving .wavs from CD-Rs, even same disc with different computers.
 
this is a non-issue, aside from the other drive failing altogether. modern IDE drives i believe present a "perfect media" just like scsi drives have for ages-that is, they automatically detect sectors getting iffy and relocate data accordingly. copying a data file like a wav doesn't have the issues that true digital audio (direct, rather than file formats) has, like jitter and whatnot. you will be fine, though if you're feeling paranoid, you might want to put them to cd-r too.
 
Burn them to CDR. Even cheap generic CDRs should have a shelf life of 10 years. Just make sure to burn them as data files, not an audio CD.
 
double check

if you're still worried about them then you can check the file size of the original and copied file, but usually if the file didn't copy all the way and it's a .wav file it won't play at all. mp3 is a different story, however.

dlv
 
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