Backup! Backup!! BACKUP!!!

[TJ Hvasta]

Just saw a post about hard drive crashing and losing all the sequences the OP had... We cant say it enough times..


[align=center]You NEED to backup your Sequence and Audio folders so you dont lose all your hard work!! [/align]

Thumb drives are cheap cheap cheap! There are 1GB drives for $5 out there... PLEASE back up your work! And NOT on the drive in your computer!


[align=center]Back up your Sequence and Audio folders![/align]

[Gary Levelius]

Another option is to use a service like Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) , which is an online but off-site backup. $55 a year for unlimited backup, easy to retrieve files to ANY computer and it's been PRICELESS to me after an hard drive crash earlier this year.

-Gary-

[Tim Fischer]

I couldn't agree more - thanks for starting this thread.

It's happened to me in the past (not with LOR files). It will happen to you eventually. BACK UP!

I happen to use Mozy myself. It's pretty much the same thing as Carbonite - provides unlimited offsite backup for a relatively low cost. Any backup system that you have to do yourself is prone to failure - and services like Mozy and Carbonite take it a notch safer by having everything stored offline. You might not be as worried about your LOR show if your house burns down, but what about all those digital photos?

[toymakr000]

I keep several backups. Basically on every computer I come in contact regularly as well as a thumb drive and backup hd. I have lost one sequence in the last 5 years because I was being lazy. I learned my lesson.

[WayneKremer]

I completely agree with this! To me, digital photos and video is more critical than sequences and audio. I can re-create the sequences and audio, but I can't do that on photos and video.

In addition to occassional local backups, I also use www.crashplan.com to backup all my computers offsite. Fire, theft, virus attacks, etc. would destroy your local backup. Think of the monthly offsite costs as insurance....

Wayne

[tboerjan]

My "show" computer wouldn't boot about a week ago and I panicked. Although it turned out to be a bad ide cable (minor and cheap repair); i took the opportunity to "ghost" the original hard drive and upgrade to a bigger newer drive and set the old one aside for emergencies. The best thing about ghost is it copies and makes the new partitions proportionally bigger to fit the new, bigger drive. Awesome if your C: drive is getting full.

[Terry Hurrle]

I had my show sequences backed up on a flash drive and it disappeared. I have everything on two computers another flash drive and on an external hard drive. You can't back up too much.

[friskybri]

I learned the hard way with pictures I had for about 5 years worth die on a drive back in 2005. I still have the drive and am waiting on the price of pulling the platters and retrieving the data to come down. All I want is the my pictures thats it. Not wanting to pay 2000 to get that. Now I have 3 back up hard drives 3 different pc's all networked in my house. 2 more drives not on network. Just ordered another 3.5gh quad core 16gb mem, Blue-ray burner, 2tb drive. 1gb video card for my show pc next year.

[Guest wbottomley]

I use drop box.

[Jim Saul]

Microsoft live 2011 install a free program called mesh, that will sync your my docs between computers too.

funny part of seeing this thread is that I've been working all day and night on a customers server because they haven't bothered to put the backup tapes in since I soled it to them 3 years ago, and of course now, the server crashed. I'm thinking after the get the bill for me to pend 15+ hours on a Saturday to recover the server that they will start using the tapes.

Gary - yes, Carbonite is Great, I recommend it for anyone with high speed internet.

[Don]

WayneKremer wrote:

In addition to occassional local backups, I also use http://www.crashplan.com to backup all my computers offsite. Fire, theft, virus attacks, etc. would destroy your local backup. Think of the monthly offsite costs as insurance....

Wayne

Wayne,

Thank you for posting this. I've been using JungleDisk offsite backup (via Amazon's S3 service) for about 18 months now. When I saw your post I checked out CrashPlan and tried it out. Only needed 3 days to tell me this is top notch software. The new version is great.

Folks, if you are not backing up your files, do it now!

[Bret LeFevre]

I have had my show running since Thanksgiving. I backup to a jump drive after every change. I am thankful that I do because I came home last Thursday and had a dead show computer. I always have LOR on another computer just in case so I pulled out my laptop, transferred my sequences and show to it and was backup before the show started.

I now have a new computer and the show is running great again. If I hadn't had my backups, or thought I'd back them up later, then I'd be done for this year.

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP CONSTANTLY!!!


Now to rebuild my old computer. A new hard drive is in it's future!

[chuckd]

Don't forget to 'backup' everything else as well. Incidentally, I keep my sequences on four different computers, and back up every hour when sequencing.

But, I also have a duplicate show computer, extra USB485 converters, extra LOR 1602's, and an extra FM transmitter and antenna plus plenty of spare light strand and extension cords.

The reason?

Typically during the season I'll lose two 1602's, one USB485 and quite a few light strands. Thankfully I haven't lost a computer or transmitter yet, but all it takes is a lightning hit or something like that and we'd be done.

Disks fail, electronics fail, light strands fail, etc. Plan for it ahead of time.

[pdowns]

We all agree. Anything that can happen, WILL happen, so plan for it. But for my 2 cents, I don't like offsite backup services since I don't trust them with my data.

I use a network attached backup drive in my house and a program called Tivoli Continuous Data Protection. Whenever I press the "save" button in ANY program I'm using (LOR, Word, etc.), a copy is sent to my backup drive. You can configure it to keep multiple versions, etc.

What I like about this approach is that I never have to remember to make backups. They are done continuously whenever any file changes.

Of course, I make full backups too. And I not only write to spinning disks but to other media such as CDs, DVDs and thumb drives.

[texascop]

I have an HP Windows Home Server (Microsofts scaled down version of Server 2003). All my PC's are networked and the Home Server does an automatic, complete backup of every PC between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM every night. I have 4TB storage but it can have as little as 1TB.

If you lose a PC or hard drive, you drop a Restore program CD into the new or repaired PC and it pulls the data back down. You can keep multiple copies of backups.

The Home Server does a lot more like streaming video. Highly recommended if you have a home network and two or more PCs.

[taybrynn]

Great advice. I just backed up just now.

A couple years ago, I signed up for Mozy (free 1GB offer, still available I think) ... and a week later, my laptop hard drive died.

Boy was I glad I backed up ... and Mozy is rather painless and automatic. And the restore smooth and lots of options.