Online Data Backup........

[ragani]

Hey Mazz,This is a great thread, and something I know I am always trying to better perfect. At present, I keep a working copy plus a back up here at my studio, and I send one updated drive off-site (done at the end of each week). The only challenge with that process is-- there is always one day a week where all my drives are at my studio (on the day that the off-site one is brought home for back-up). I don't really care how long an off-site one would take to upload, as I don't ever intend to need to use that one. It's really only there for emergency, in case of some real disaster at the home system site. So I will just be thankful to have the off-site system to recover data. However, I would love to find something that could be done out of town, as any weather disaster to my studio would likely affect my off-site as well (it's only 1 mile away). You have earthquakes, we have tornados, floods, and blizzards... So keep us posted if you (or anyone) has any tries or experience with backup storage companies. I'm always looking to improve my process for backup storage!Raags

[ckbarlow]

For OS and apps: Carbon Copy Cloner and similar freeware apps will make a bootable clone of your OS drive. Also worth doing once in a while.Harrowing real-life story! hee hee: In May 06 my iBook internal drive started dying but I had two weekend performances in a row that I needed it for. While the iBook would still start up, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone its drive to an external firewire drive. Sure enough, the iBook drive died during the week between 1st and 2nd performances. I did the second performance from the ext drive, with my laptop acting as merely screen and keyboard. It worked. funny details about that: The performance in question was a very experimental piece constructed from a recording of a gunshot, and I performed it using a DrumKat (drum pad controller) so that it would be very physical, even a little violent. The screen on the iBook was also on its way out, and it was on the same table as the DrumKat. So every %$$# time I hit the DrumKat, the iBook screen would flicker. One of my buddies in the audience saw it happening and was saying to himself, Oh no... Oh no... every time it happened... but my little iBook made it through. It was a little rock-n-roll machine, I tell you, gasping like Capt. Kirk, "One... more... show.... " LOL....

[mazz]

CK,Great info and great story!Sounds like you do some cool stuff, I dig that experimental stuff. Can we hear some?I used to do a lot of free improv but now I do expensive composition (sorry, bad joke). I had a band in the early 90s that was totally improvisation based. Our first song was so long it was also our first set!! I miss that sometimes.Thanks again,Mazz

[ckbarlow]

Quote:CK,...Sounds like you do some cool stuff, I dig that experimental stuff. Can we hear some?...MazzSure -- there are a couple little bits on my Web site. Go to www.ckbarlow.com and click the soundtracks link. You'll see images and links related to mostly theater or film productions, but look for "Elevator Music" and "Moth TV."when do I get to hear yours?

[mazz]

Nice stuff!! Very creative use of the recordings/samples! You cover a lot of ground, that's awesome!!If you go to my website www.johnmazzei.com I just added an album called edgy/weird click the album link and go down to the bottom and it's there. Some things from past film projects and more fusion-y experiments. Not as experimental as yours but kind of fun.Cheers,Mazz

[ckbarlow]

What I love about theater work is that one project is Wild West saloon ballads and the next is string quartets and the next is post-apocalyptic junk-shrine music. You just never know. And you get completely nutty playwrights like Mac Wellman who actually script things like "this scene needs an organ dirge that turns into surf guitar music for the Vampyrettes to dance to" (his absurdist version of Dracula). I LOVE it.

[nickbatzdorf]

I use SuperDuper by Shirt Pocket software rather than Carbon Copy Cloner. It does incremental back-ups, which CCC never wanted to do (although maybe it does now).But I do use two kinds of back-up onto two FireWire drives:1. A bit-for-bit block copy of my system drive when it's working, using Apple Disk Utility; I only change that after installing new copy-protected programs, the idea being that the block copy will maintain auths if the drive gets totally screwed up.2. Periodic incremental back-ups using SuperDuper. This only takes 15 minutes or so and woks in the background.So if something major goes wrong I have the block copy to restore the working system, and then I can increment it from the SuperDuper back-up to restore all my email, documents, and so on.But I should have an off-site one too, because we live in a potential fire area.

[ckbarlow]

Quote:I use SuperDuper by Shirt Pocket software rather than Carbon Copy Cloner. It does incremental back-ups, which CCC never wanted to do (although maybe it does now).But I do use two kinds of back-up onto two FireWire drives:1. A bit-for-bit block copy of my system drive when it's working, using Apple Disk Utility; I only change that after installing new copy-protected programs, the idea being that the block copy will maintain auths if the drive gets totally screwed up.2. Periodic incremental back-ups using SuperDuper. This only takes 15 minutes or so and woks in the background.So if something major goes wrong I have the block copy to restore the working system, and then I can increment it from the SuperDuper back-up to restore all my email, documents, and so on.But I should have an off-site one too, because we live in a potential fire area.That seems like a really good system. I never bothered with what you might call the ongoing-use features of CCC, so I couldn't speak to using it for incremental, periodic document backup. My exclusive use was to create the bootable sys copy.But SuperDuper sounds like a champ.

[gitarrero]

...another idea: instead of using an upload/online service one could buy a firewire/usb harddisc, backup everything, and bringt this harddrive in a safe deposite box (...you guessed it, I'm living in SWITZERLAND..)it costs about $100 a year to rent a safe deposit box, the harddrive is secure and you have easely access to it (simply use your local bank).I think I will go for this option, so: have a portable drive at home with the backups, plus have a backup in a safe deposit.just an ideacheers,swiss-banker martin

[ckbarlow]

Martin, you should move to Albuquerque!Not only could you hang out with me, which is reason enough -- BUT my safe deposit box costs... $12/year.Actually, it's a smallish one. But I'm sure I could get one big enough across to hold a DVD or portable HD, as we say in the West, For a Few Dollars More.sheesh... what was in my lunch?!