Backing up files? External Hard Drives?

treydey33

New member
Hey all.

I've been making stuff on Logic and Ableton for about 9 months now... I have quite a bit of material and it's not something I plan on losing. I understand back-up is important but I just don't know where to start.

Cloud storage? External Hard Drives? A USB flash drive?

I want something that I can plug in every now and then and save ALL my files from this laptop, I don't care about security for now (although it would be nice to keep under the bed), and this is assuming my apartment will never burn down. Also, I don't care about having an external drive to keep samples on. All I care about is storage, just incase you know, I drop my Macbook or it dies on me. I'm using a Macbook Pro, so I only have 2 usb's and a thunderbolt output (One usb is split between a MIDI controller and a mouse, and the other usb is running an audio interface). So unless it's a Thunderbolt, I'm not fond of the idea of having something extra plugged into my computer 24/7.

Seriously though I have no idea. I know nothing. I just want to know what I should do to back stuff up in this case the worst happens to this computer.
 
I have a large external HD...

I never back any of my projects up. I do store samples on there, but it's mainly full of music and photos...

Bad NoGuru Bad!!
 
My setup is sloppy, a TB drive and a 500gb extra drive at average 7400rpm.
Cloud storage is useful for fast internet. 6mbps upload for instance.
But backing up to a drive is about... 50-250mb per second.

For this time period, sticking to drives. Backing up stuff is not necessary, partitions get rid of that issue entirely and can split one drive into multiple virtual drives so windows never even touches parts of a drive.
 
The smaller one is my "lab" where I store projects and drumkits/wavetables/graintables and sample libraries and some anime and films lol. Also be storing my kong patches and little reaktor module too.

The big one's where I put windows into partitions for steam, windows 10, emulators.
One of these days I might just get rid of both and use a bigger one with partitions.
 
I'm not familiar with cloud storage, but I would definitely have maybe two backup external hard drives and update them (or transfer your new files to the backups) every 1-2 weeks. You don't have to keep all of them plugged in, but it will be nice to have an extra just in case your hard drive crash (which it can do).
 
Remember backups can fail too. You should unplug them when not backing up as failure is linked to wear which is linked to usage. A partition is not a viable backup method since the drive is still spinning whether you are accessing the partition or not.

What you use to backup i guess depends on what you're backing up and its importance. Cloud storage with a well established company i would probably consider the most fail-safe in respect of external factors (dropping, fire, etc.,), but a HDD that's used periodically can potentially last many years.
 
You can always backup the business way and have all of the below
a) local backups on your pc
b) cloud backups
c) external HDD backup
d) ANOTHER external HDD backup off-site incase of a complete disaster

Im far to lazy personally
 
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