Better saved than sorry

[nomiyah]

Quote:"Teresa, I said dumb it down... whew, that was over my head."Sorry about that...I just got going and couldnt stop. I do appreciate the effort, wish I could keep up. But as I understand it, the "thingy" is better than an external hard drive because it automatically saves on 4 drives instead of 1 and because it doesn't use a USB port (does it use firewire?). Did I get the basics right?

[roughly]

Nomi,Yeah, you have the basic idea. It uses a network cable (not firewire). So it's the type of cable that you use to plug in the internet. Depending on your setup, you probably have a router in between your computer and modem. So you would plug the thingy into the router. If you don't have a router, probably an external drive would be better for you. Theresa

[nomiyah]

My studio computer isn't online at this time. So it seems simplest to just use an external hard drive. Now here's the next question: USB versus Firewire. I've heard both sides argued convincingly. What do you guys think?

[nomiyah]

Gunter,Thanks for the answer. I'm using PC with Firewire and USB but not sure which kind. Do I have to find out and get an external hd that's compatible? I'll probably get the largest I can for the money I have. Whenever it fills up I can get another.Nomi

[matto]

Quote:One more thought...I wouldn't buy the biggest disk you can!If possible buy two 250 GB HD's instead of one e.g. 500 GB HD...HD's are great but there's always a possibility of a crash!If one of your 250 HD's crashes you still got a second HD... If you use 500 GB in two devices you're more on the safe side of back up life! This is true but if you strictly use the external drive for BACK-UP (meaning the same data still resides on your internal drive as well) both your internal and external drives would have to crash at the same time which is HIGHLY unlikely. Then once the project is finished you can additionally archive it on CD or DVD.Btw, since your computer was just recently built with modern components, you almost certainly have USB 2.0, so you can go with that.

[nomiyah]

Quote:Quote:One more thought...I wouldn't buy the biggest disk you can!If possible buy two 250 GB HD's instead of one e.g. 500 GB HD...HD's are great but there's always a possibility of a crash!If one of your 250 HD's crashes you still got a second HD... If you use 500 GB in two devices you're more on the safe side of back up life! This is true but if you strictly use the external drive for BACK-UP (meaning the same data still resides on your internal drive as well) both your internal and external drives would have to crash at the same time which is HIGHLY unlikely. Then once the project is finished you can additionally archive it on CD or DVD.Btw, since your computer was just recently built with modern components, you almost certainly have USB 2.0, so you can go with that. So you think USB is better than Firewire? The main complaint I've heard about USB is that it takes much longer to burn big files. In your experience, is that true or myth?

[matto]

Quote:So you think USB is better than Firewire? The main complaint I've heard about USB is that it takes much longer to burn big files. In your experience, is that true or myth?No I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm saying it doesn't really matter (for the type of file sizes that would be generated in an average day of home recording). USB 2.0 on a PC is quite fast and afaik tends to be somewhere between FW400 and FW800 depending on implementation.I have no experience with USB CD/DVD burners, but I thought you were just talking about connecting an external hard disk and saving backups to that drive? So "burning of big files" would be irrelevant to your application...or am I misunderstanding you?

[nomiyah]

Just saving daily files. But the thing is, I may work on several songs in one day. Each song has a lot of tracks and I may have made lots of little changes. So I'd want to save the whole thing each day. But you answered my question. Thanks Matt.

[nomiyah]

I got an external hard drive, which is working fine for backups. I'm having trouble burning to a CD or DVD though. I can burn a regular audio file (like the mix down of a song) but I can't burn a session with all the separate tracks and effects settings.I looked in the Pro Tools manual and got more confused, what with all the Bounce-To-Disk, Import/Export-Audio, Import/Export Midi, Save-Copy-As, etc.I tried to export directly to the CD but it says: Error, can't export to unmapped network drive. I tried to drag and drop the folder to the CDR but it won't work. When I bounce to disk and then try to burn a CD, it says the files aren't recognized.Do I need something other than Nero? Thanks.Nomi

[jeffe]

I have two hard drives on my music computer. Each time I modify an existing project, I back up the original to the secondary drive, with a date/timestamp. When there is enough to fill a DVD then I back them up. This is quite useful if you are doing stuff every day.Don't forget the rise of Blue Ray technology. These beauties can store 25gb and 50gb on a single disk. That's 10 times more that your standard DVD.