Backing Up Projects - What is the Best Way?

I recently had a bad experience and purchased a DAW from Sweetwater. Horrible piece of junk that crapped out twice, the second time after they said they fixed it. Well before I ran Acronis the software that is included trying to rebuild it back to factory spec I backed up my P5 projects to a DVD. Well the DVD player was also obviously bad in this unit because the DVD is not readable now (gives off masssive errors even after trying rescue program on it ) and I've lost valuable work. While I know the DAW I'm getting from LiquidDAW will be tops based on reviews here on the user sites and from speaking with Scott who obviously knows his stuff, I was wondering if there are any particular ways other users back up their P5 and Sonar projects that might insure I never lose work again?

Thanks,

-G-

Well if the DVD drive is bad in your computer, then surely the DVD you backed up will work once you have a new DVD drive?

I personally burn a CD with all my project files each time I finish a song and store them all together.

No unfortuantely the DVD backup was corrupt thanks to the bad DVD drive (a DVD recovery program wa run on it to no avail) , so no the projects are lost. I did export to .wav and burn a CD to hear the mix via a discman (I like to listen to the mix in different players and formats to see how it sounds) so I'm hoping I can reconstruct them from the .wav.

Great points, as I have experienced that first hand. I was running P5 on my old Pentium PIII before I got the Sweetwater DAW as a way to get started and had several projects that were created on the old machine that would not play on the new one because a certain reverb device could not be found.

ORIGINAL: oroboros

Something I was thinking about the other day. Not only should all files be backed up, but all plugin/synth patch settings (usually they're fxp's or something) should be individually saved too. The reason for this is that if your computer crashes, unless you install everything in EXACTLY the same places as before (or if you do "housecleaning" and erase synths used before, or even simply upgrade current synths or software packages) your p5p file will not be able to load certain synths (DXi's, VSTi's?), and it will be impossible to get that sound you created back again (unless you used an unmodified preset, and remember exactly which one it was). If you can't load that synth track, then you can't recover and/or save the sound preset, so catch-22, you lose. So also save the settings for your synths, too, when you do a backup. That way, you can open it on any other system, by reloading an instance of that synth, reloading the patch setting for it, since you saved it, and you'll be good to go, whether you're opening your project on someone else's computer, or an upgraded / salvaged version of your own. I've learned this lesson the hard way.

Some good advice there oroboros. I'm thinking of freezing every track before backing up projects, so that if I restore a backup and some of the plugin settings are lost for some of the tracks, at least I have a WAV file to use as a reference to recreate the plugin settings (and if that track doesn't need modification, then it can just stay frozen). I haven't actually tried this yet, but I have a good collection of old Cakewalk/Sonar bundles that can't load their plugins any more and want to avoid more of the same.

Really your entire DAW should be backed up so you can recover it entirely down the the most recently used settings on your projects--this will save you tons of time trying to rebuild things in the future should it happen again. The least expensive way to get a full system backup is to use the backup program that comes with Windows XP (Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Backup).

Another nice thing about Windows Backup utility is the fact that it will write everything to a single file which you can then burn to DVD (if it will fit) or write to an external/removable hard drive. It will also work with tape devices directly.

There are other nice backup utilities for Windows which are inexpensive and give you even more features.

Treat your DAW like a business would (or should) treat its main file server--everything there is precious and worthy of careful and full backups.

(Now if I would just take my own advice...)

Expanding on techead's post, I also recommend every drive in a computer be in a RAID 1 [or 5] setup (so for me 2x2 drives, soon to be 3x2 - yes that's 6 drives! - make sure your power supply can handle it). This will easily save your data, if one of your hard drives goes south - which has happened to me 5 times, thus far, in my life - twice at work, three times at home. Disk drives are relatively cheap, and many motherboards these days come with integrated RAID chips, so don't wait until it's too late. It will happen, it's just a question of time. I once (ultra stupidly) "temporarily" had a RAID 0 setup [as in zero safety - half the data on one drive, half on the other] fail - price tag for recovery? Quotes from $11,000 to $18,000. Lost my first P5 song that way (not to mention 6 month's worth of work). And I was lucky I only lost that one, honestly. Backup is no joke. $100 for a disk drive beats thousands for a professional recovery place to extract your data, or zero to lose it all, not to mention 5 minutes of lost time vs. months of rework and never really recovering everything back.

Having said this, RAID is still not a total solution, techead's advice should still be followed, because if you get a virus or something similar, then with a RAID system, both drives will then be equally screwed up (virtually, not physically). You could still recover data by hosting the compromised drive under a clean OS environment, but it would still be a pain, would stop whatever you were doing for a while, you would have to prep the second clean host drive, while a good backup would have saved you much time and aggrivation.

I've been there, folks. It's no fun. Not just your songs, but photos, letters, docs, contacts, emails, etc.

RAID: Redundant Array of Independant Drives (I think)
RAID 1: 1 to 1 mirroring (so only one useable drive, in other words, which is 100% backed up all the time, in realtime - so no thinking necessary once it's set up!)
RAID 5: fancier version of RAID 1