Johnbee58

mettelus
 
 
Be very wary of "scare tactic" marketing... the "I'm mainly concerned about losing this data if the house burns down or gets hit by a tornado or something like that." If that would occur and you lost EVERYTHING, I really doubt (and would very much hope) that backup files are going to be incredibly low on your list of priorities. I highly doubt anyone in a tent-farm in CA is wandering around mumbling "Man, I lost all of my cwp files!!" If houses burned down or got hit by tornadoes often, insurance companies wouldn't be rolling in money.

Please don't insult my intelligence.  In a catastrophe of course the data loss would not even be on my list of priorities at the time but hopefully and eventually life goes on and things are rebuilt and repaired and we go with life.  May take a few months or a few years but we try to all get back to where we were before the disaster.  It might even eventually get back to the point where I could resume making music.  It's a possibility.  If I don't back up the data now it would be gone forever in a situation like that.
 
JB

A couple of years ago we had a power brown-out, which was a total nightmare.
 
Power loss is fine, everything switches off. If you're unlucky, a file or two gets corrupted.
 
The brown-out managed to trash 3 spin-drives and an SSD. The voltage at the socket was reading a little over 100V (where it should have been 240V).
 
I lost a LOT of data that day, thankfully not much that I didn't have archived on DVD.
 
What it did teach me is:
 
1. Backing up to a NAS (or anything that is normally plugged in) is not the best plan. Back it up to a removable disk.
2. A UPS is a really good investment, but it probably wouldn't protect me from a lightning strike power surge.
3. Cloud backup is good for peace of mind, but it's slow and unless you're doing incremental backups, backups to a removable disk should always be done as well.
 
My current backup strategy is to image my disks once a month on to removable disks, and do backups of my projects to cloud storage as and when I create them.
 
This way I can restore my complete DAW system to a new set of disks in around 2-3 hours... the image backup get's the bulk of the system there, and the cloud sync does the most recent stuff.
 

msmcleod
 
 
A couple of years ago we had a power brown-out, which was a total nightmare.
 
Power loss is fine, everything switches off. If you're unlucky, a file or two gets corrupted.
 
The brown-out managed to trash 3 spin-drives and an SSD. The voltage at the socket was reading a little over 100V (where it should have been 240V).
 
I lost a LOT of data that day, thankfully not much that I didn't have archived on DVD.
 
What it did teach me is:
 
1. Backing up to a NAS (or anything that is normally plugged in) is not the best plan. Back it up to a removable disk.
2. A UPS is a really good investment, but it probably wouldn't protect me from a lightning strike power surge.
3. Cloud backup is good for peace of mind, but it's slow and unless you're doing incremental backups, backups to a removable disk should always be done as well.
 
My current backup strategy is to image my disks once a month on to removable disks, and do backups of my projects to cloud storage as and when I create them.
 
This way I can restore my complete DAW system to a new set of disks in around 2-3 hours... the image backup get's the bulk of the system there, and the cloud sync does the most recent stuff.
 

I've heard from several people that a brown out can be more destructive on electronic equipment that just a plain power disruption.
I never (yet anyway) was unfortunate enough to experience a brown out and I hope I never do but  I would think it's probably not a good idea to record music or do anything that involves a PC on any very hot summer day even if you have air conditioning.  Thanks for the warning.
 
JB

A UPS would help in brownouts.  The UPS has voltage parameters (high and low) and when they exceed those parameters (on some UPS they are programmable) it will switch to battery backup and allow an "orderly" shutdown so no data is lost.  This assumes you have a UPS of the correct size.  It would have protected the instance of 240V sagging to 100V.
 
I have my PC and recording interface on UPS power.  This obviously doesn't help a guitar amp that is plugged into a separate AC outlet when a power problem arises.  But it does protect the PC and recording hardware.
 
I do local backups.  I'm not moving around to different locations for recording so I don't need cloud backups.  I back up, using Macrium Reflect, doing full drive (all partition) backups of the OS drive and the separate drive that has Sonar Projects.  I have two USB 3.0 drives that I use for backups (full disc images) and alternate the drive that I backup to.  Frequency depends on what I've done (e.g. a recording project) but at a minimum weekly.  I only do full backups, no incremental.  When I was working we tried incrementals on our file servers and found they can get confusing and it takes longer to restore since you have to first load the full backup and then the subsequent incrementals (however many that is) in correct sequence.  With only full backups, only one backup file is involved. 
 
I was a regional LAN/WAN Network and hardware help desk manager for a US Federal Government Agency until I retired (my area was everything west of the Mississippi River to the Rockies).  Our Agency Electrical Engineering department did a very in-depth study of AC power and problems at our field offices.  It was determined that most power outages were either the momentary outage or only lasted less than 10 minutes.  A UPS of proper power (wattage) capability will protect those types of outages.  Living in Florida I find that is most of my outages (momentary or short duration).  The only extended outage I had was because of a Hurricane. 

I have a ups and usb drives for back up. I plug them in now and then and back up my latest projects. I have misplaced projects with this method.

Cloud storage is way way too expensive for the amount of data I need to back up.

Honestly, if it all disappeared I'd just shrug and go plug in and jam with friends.

Sand mandalla poured carefully into the creek.