So my recording PC is getting long in the tooth. I think it's 9, and it's running Windows 7 which I do not do any further upgrades on. It's not connected to the internet apart from Reaper upgrades. Its sole purpose is recording, nothing else. Probably after I finish the album I'm working on, I will go in for a new PC and this one is the archive of everything done on it.
The Windows Back up routine is no longer there - I don't know what happened to it, it just simply does not appear and I'm not doing any upgrades to find it again. So I bought a backup program, years ago, when this happened, and have been using that since. Not exactly sure how that would work in the event of a drive failure anyway. I back up the actual recorded data routinely to an external hard drive, but also have other hard drives with various "full system backups" on them. It's just a bit scattered and I don't really know what the hell I'd do with them, given they're done on an external program, anyway, if the damn thing died.
From where I am now, backing up "the computer" as such seems to be a complete waste of time. If the hard drive or SSD fails, the PC is probably sunk forever - I won't be able to find something similar in terms of hardware to replace the drive and the OS is obsolete, and why would I even bother? If a drive fails, that would become the catalyst for a new complete computer with new OS.
It seems to me that what I should now be doing is backing up, in more than one location, not just the data but everything relating to any program that's on it - and I'm thinking VSTs etc. - so all the myriad plug ins, which are usually just single .dll files - plus the larger items that are currently in use such as the Slate drums, the Omnisphere synth, Pianoteq and their samples - that sort of stuff. So that if this PC dies before album completion, I can resurrect everything on a new PC with a minimum of fuss. (Ha! ) To some extent I'm sort of already doing this but there's stuff everywhere and getting systematic and organised about it is probably a good idea.
So that's the question - ditch the full computer back up thingy and just track down all the individual VSTs and executables and ensure I have them all backed up as well, in multiple places, or continue with "proper" full system backups? The hard drive is making the odd noise and I'm getting nervous.
What say you?
Advice on my backing up strategy
- vomitHatSteve
- Posts: 6521
- Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 11:06 am
- Location: Undisclosed
- Contact:
Re: Advice on my backing up strategy
If I were behaving correctly with my similarly-configured PC, my strategy would be:
Install a secondary hard drive
Periodically back up the $HOME/AppData/Roaming/REAPER folder to that drive
Keep a list of all the software as well as installer files there
Copy stems over from projects as I complete them
Then I would periodically backup the full contents of that drive to an external location. (probably AWS S3 at this point. 2 cents per GB per month is pretty cheap)
That is all assuming I'm acting right. So far, I've installed the secondary drive.
Install a secondary hard drive
Periodically back up the $HOME/AppData/Roaming/REAPER folder to that drive
Keep a list of all the software as well as installer files there
Copy stems over from projects as I complete them
Then I would periodically backup the full contents of that drive to an external location. (probably AWS S3 at this point. 2 cents per GB per month is pretty cheap)
That is all assuming I'm acting right. So far, I've installed the secondary drive.
Re: Advice on my backing up strategy
I manually back up the stuff I need to keep safe and have system restore to a 2nd drive.
I used to use a back up program but when I needed it after a catastrophic failure it wouldn't work properly because the reformatted drive didn't have an exact match for version of the OS. This stuff probably doesn't happen anymore BUT I won't go through that horror again.
I have three external drives attached to a W10 off line computer and all my music/video projects are manually copied to two of them...BIAB is the 3rd one.
W11 will be fun...online account/registration/back n forth with subscription everything.
I used to use a back up program but when I needed it after a catastrophic failure it wouldn't work properly because the reformatted drive didn't have an exact match for version of the OS. This stuff probably doesn't happen anymore BUT I won't go through that horror again.
I have three external drives attached to a W10 off line computer and all my music/video projects are manually copied to two of them...BIAB is the 3rd one.
W11 will be fun...online account/registration/back n forth with subscription everything.
Cheers
rayc
rayc
Re: Advice on my backing up strategy
This is my issue - what do I do with my backed up data done by some program that's not installed on the new computer...? Nothing.
I think I'll just do what I'm thinking of doing - just get all the files of everything somewhere, keep a couple of copies, and, as I'm doing now, back up all changes to actual projects as they're being done.
Re: Advice on my backing up strategy
I back up to a local NAS on my home network, but I don't yet have any off-site cloud storage. I guess I have some stuff backed up to OneDrive (good luck NOT backing up to OneDrive when you move to Win10/11...MS has gotten downright aggressive in getting you to install it). I've got a 40TB NAS in RAID5 (so about 30TB of space) that I back up video and music projects to on my home network.
I don't do anything to back up apps or plugins. They're all available online so I just go get them again when I need to. I lost an SSD a couple years back and had to do that. And the previous year I'd intentionally cleared everything when upgrading/migrating to newer hardware. It's not a fast process, and it'll test your data cap if your ISP has one (I found out that mine does). But I was able to recover everything that I use in a day or so. Superior Drummer libraries were hands-down the biggest time sink to download and install. But at least Toontrack's download manager makes it pretty brainless.
One time when I did a clean install of Windows, it left an HTML document on my desktop that listed out everything I had installed. That was pretty handy to at least remember what all I needed to reinstall. But I have no idea how that was generated, and I've never seen it since. Could be a Windows feature, but I have no idea.
This PowerShell command will list out all of your currently installed apps. You can copy/paste or pipe it to a text file so you can refer back to it after migrating:
I don't do anything to back up apps or plugins. They're all available online so I just go get them again when I need to. I lost an SSD a couple years back and had to do that. And the previous year I'd intentionally cleared everything when upgrading/migrating to newer hardware. It's not a fast process, and it'll test your data cap if your ISP has one (I found out that mine does). But I was able to recover everything that I use in a day or so. Superior Drummer libraries were hands-down the biggest time sink to download and install. But at least Toontrack's download manager makes it pretty brainless.
One time when I did a clean install of Windows, it left an HTML document on my desktop that listed out everything I had installed. That was pretty handy to at least remember what all I needed to reinstall. But I have no idea how that was generated, and I've never seen it since. Could be a Windows feature, but I have no idea.
This PowerShell command will list out all of your currently installed apps. You can copy/paste or pipe it to a text file so you can refer back to it after migrating:
Code: Select all
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, InstallDate, DisplayVersion, Publisher | Format-Table –AutoSize