Remember to do offsite backups homechickens!

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:11 am

People are losing their houses left and right with all these bushfires here in Victoria.

One of my D&B producing mates just lost his house + all his music work for the past 3 years... backups!? Yep, tons of backups on DVD's and external HD's. Guess where they were.... wah wahhh.

Just a friendly reminder to stash a spare drive at moms place.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:27 am

it's really, really shitty what people are going through there

and yes if it's stuff you want to keep it's always a good idea to not keep all the eggs in the one basket

but on one level I kind of imagine if that happened to me there would be something a little freeing about it - like a chance to totally start fresh and take all the skills and knowledge you'd developed over the past 3 years to do something completely new

I mean those kind of fires tend to be once in a lifetime things (we hope!)

so not at all meaning to be callous or unsympathetic, but for me I'm not so concerned about backups because I feel that with anything really worth keeping there will be some core ideas that would stick

anyway, hope you're all doing ok down there - it's hard to believe we're in the same country

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:31 am

That's funny, I said the same thing to somebody else and they cracked it. I said it might be a good experience to just have a clean slate and it turned into a big hulabaloo, so yeah, i know exactly what you mean

Nokatus · Post by **Nokatus** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:31 am

A very good reminder.

This is exactly why I go into "Yeah, but...." mode when ever someone says something to the effect of "I've got robust backups of my stuff, my studio computer has a super redundant RAID setup, so I don't have to worry!"

Store important backups at a different physical location or the backups are only good for drive failures and such - not fire, water, burglary or other incidents which can effectively wipe everything in one location.

Edit: And I agree with forge, losing a lot of baggage can sometimes be a good thing. It just hurts a lot if you're right in the middle of a long project you're totally into, going on for months or even years, and you lose that.

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:11 am

the old IT saying is

"Data doesnt exist unless its in three separate places..."

Green Lemon · Post by **Green Lemon** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:26 pm

Ouch man. And do I understand correctly that at least some of the fires were arson?

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:06 pm

Yep, some people couldn't resist lighting fires and torching entire towns with the help of 45c degree (117f +) days. The police have said if they catch them, they will be charged with mass murder and left to 'rot' in prison.

CHARLIE! · Post by **CHARLIE!** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:09 pm

Rave wrote:Music can be made you can't bring families back to life.

Something about your sig makes it impossible to take that with the proper somber tone it demands...

oh yea maybe because it is a bouncing happy face

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:21 pm

I do offsite backup swaps with one of my best mates using an external 1Tb drive. Every so often when we catch up he brings the drive with him and I perform a incremental backup to bring it up to date.

Data loss is fucked but nothing can compare to what those in the Victorian bushfires are going through. I have a talented producer friend who has possibly lost his house - he's not sure yet because the authorities haven't allowed him back in the area to check it yet.

Sibanger · Post by **Sibanger** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:18 am

I live in the hills east of Melbourne.

We are not under immediate threat at this stage, but it's a bit of a worry.

Our fire plan is to get the fuck out if it starts to look bad.

First, grab the kids, then cats, then the ext 1 tb hard drive + old photos and a bag of clothes. Oh, the insurance papers. (very important)

I'd love to take my whole studio, or even my favorite synths, but at the end of the day, they can be replaced.

If you guys from Qld could spare us some of that rain, things would be a lot sweeter all round.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:38 am

I saw the same thing happening in Copenhagen last year.
A rehearsal room with a huge SSL desk, vintage and rare drum kits, DAW and Backups and basically everything else you would have near you mixing desk and band rehearsal room... All molten down, literally leveled to the floor since most of the building was made of wood.
The insurance cheques relieve the pain, but you still lost virtually everything you ever bought, made and produced.

Half a terabyte of online storage is worth its volume in gold. Especially if the company hosting your backups makes backups of that too.
Though little server boxes aren't that expensive anymore. Machinate got a sexy little server that runs on Linux and just plugs up to the internet via Ethernet. 3TB of storage in that sucker.
Have 2 of those permanently online in 2 different locations and you should be fairly safe.

Aequitas123 · Post by **Aequitas123** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:12 pm

Oh didn't you guys hear? Those fires were caused by Abortion laws.

http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2009/02 ... ush-fires/

Green Lemon · Post by **Green Lemon** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 5:25 pm

OMG that link.

Its frightening how dumb people are.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:05 am

My thoughts go out to all those effected by the bushfire - truly dreadful and incomprehensible that these fires are the work of arson. The wind is still today and a strange smoky haze has decended over the Melbourne CBD. It's hard to believe this tragedy is unfolding only about 1 hour's drive out of the city.

adventurepants_ · Post by **adventurepants_** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:13 am

timothyallan wrote:Yep, some people couldn't resist lighting fires and torching entire towns with the help of 45c degree (117f +) days. The police have said if they catch them, they will be charged with mass murder and left to 'rot' in prison.

the police havent said any such thing. They have to follow, y'know, the law.

thats been said by politicians doing some hollow chest beating trying to exploit the situation to make themselves look strong. All this hairy chesting is getting very tiresome.

If i have to watch another politician hugging some local and calling them 'mate' for the cameras im going to fucking scream.

these poor people have been through enough as it is.