Backup -Toast or Itunes

[tchipman]

Hi Phil,
I use a Digi 001, ISA220,MPX550, and a few other thingsalong with the Waves bundle. I've yet to back anything up because I've run into problems trying to get it done. With Itunes on my Mac, do I need to do a bounce or can I backup to a cd without the bounce , or do I need Itunes at all? Thanks
Tim

[cmchamp]

Tim:
Do you have a built in CDRW, or one that is 100% supported by OS9 or OSX? Since you didn't indicate your OS, I believe these will work for both.
Drop a blank CD in your CD-RW (burning) drive. You should be able to drag and drop what you want to back up to that drive. If the files are larger than 700MB, you may need to purchase something along the lines of StuffIt to make archives in larger chunks. Another much faster and easier way to do backups is to purchase an external drive with Retrospect. That way backups of folders you've indicated will be done regularly on a schedule you set.
C.

[tchipman]

thanks Phil,
I will definetly give that a try. Do you then just drag that off of the cd into PTLE if you need it later? I'm thinking about taking some stuff out of my audio drive to give myself more room. Thanks for your help. I really like you guys at Sweetwater. Ted Hunter is my sales guy.
tim

[cmchamp]

Tim:
Wish my name wa Phil!
:)
If you put stuff on a CD, then you won't be able to use it with PTLE, I think the access would be too slow. If you were to archive stuff to CD, you'd have to copy it back to the HD in order to use it.
C.

[tchipman]

Hi Cory!
Cory is a great name and I'm sorry I goofed! I did what you said and opened up the cd after I burned it and it opened up PTLE and I was able to use it. Maybe that's because the original was still there, but it did seem like it was coming right off the cd I burned. What do you think?
Tim

[cmchamp]

I guess it depends on how many tracks you're using. If your just using a few, you might be OK, but you'll really be putting a lot of stress on the CD drive. FW drives are inexpensive and would allow much more flexibility in my opinion. Your project can't be too big if it fits on a CD though.
I think you'll know when you need to move to a faster backup solution.
C.

[philcastillo]

Hi Tim (Phil here but you can call me Cory if you like :)

Cory is correct. You shouldn't run your files off of a CD. It's always good to backup your oh-so-precious files as often as possible. Getting an external Firewire drive is an excellent idea. Glyph makes good archiving drives called Net drives. Be sure to organize your projects into easy to find folders and then drop them on the Net drive. Ideally you want to be running your sessions off of a dedicated audio hard drive (like Glyph's GT drives), but if not you should at least put the archived files back on your computer drive before trying to work on them again. You never know what can happen, so having two copies in remote locations is a sure way to know that your music is safe.