Backups

[adamg67]

I thought I’d just post something on the subject of backups, since many of the people on here will be using a computer of some kind. This isn’t a “how to” or even a “you should”, and it isn’t specific to any OS. It’s just how I look at backups after both using various computers for 30 years or so and also working (amongst other things) as a developer, ops engineer and sysadmin (looking after servers, not desktop PCs) - a lot of the principles are the same.

I’ll try and keep this short, I can elaborate if anyone’s interested but the general rule on anything technical is “don’t get me started”

I do two things across all my computers, including the laptop I use for music:

1. I make sure I can reinstall the OS and all software (including plugins etc) easily. What that means is very different for different machines, the music laptop is probably the most onerous on this front, for other uses this is all automated and I can build a new one with a few commands. For the music machine I keep notes on what needs installing, from where, how it installs (virtual instrument makers have some weird ideas about this) and where any license keys are. The basic rule is, if I need to build a completely fresh copy of my music PC with all software installed, that’s no problem. It also means when I start a new PC, I have only what I want on there and the latest version of everything.

2. I make sure I have any data that I don’t want to lose - any files including things like saved presets in my DAW - backed up using a proper backup solution (for some things other than my music laptop there is a variation in this, but I still use something that lets me go back in time to previous versions of things). For me it *has* to be a real backup solution that gives me the ability to restore files from different points in time, so I can go back to a good copy of a file that I’ve screwed up (or some software has). I actually do this twice at the moment, once using iDrive (cloud backup) and once to a backup server at home that I built from the remains of the my old music desktop.

What I do not do:

I don’t maintain any kind of disk image(s) which could just be re-applied to my disk(s). I could do, but if I did this it would be *as well* as the two things I already do, not instead of either of them. That’s because there are scenarios where a disk image will not help. For OS & software, that includes: 

 - If your whole computer is toast and you’re not going to repair it. A disk image contains a lot of stuff that’s specific to your computer and you can’t just use it for a new one (iLok anyone?).
 - If you buy a new computer and want to migrate stuff to it. Lots of music software now lets you install / register on multiple computers so long as you don’t use them at the same time, so migrating can be really easy and you can have new and old at the same time.

For data, it’s the thing that you really need to protect yourself against at least as much as hardware failure: user error or software bugs which leave a file empty or corrupt, but still there to be copied to your disk image. A proper backup solution for data will give you a good chance of going back to a time when the data was there. A disk image will not, unless you keep multiple ones.

Pretty much the only scenario that a disk image helps with is hard drive failure, and yes that needs to be covered but if I have to cover the other situations as well I might as well just do it once. I've migrated to new machines a lot more often than I've replaced a failed hard drive (and I'm aware that I've just jinxed mine ).

I also don’t back up by copying files to something like an external hard drive or cloud drive. This has the same issue as a disk image in that if the contents of a file get lost or mangled, you will happily copy the damaged file to your external drive or the cloud, losing the data there as well.

Please please note that I would not want anyone to stop doing any of things I say above that I don’t do, especially if that’s all you do - it’s better than nothing. Don’t stop doing anything unless you’re replacing it with something you are sure works better.

All of this is only my 2p, YMMV and all the other caveats apply.

Edited April 21, 2020 by adamg67