I’m pretty good about backing up my data. And thank heavens for that, because the worst happened a few weeks ago. I installed an OS update on my computer, then installed a new driver for an audio interface and plop…everything went dead. No joke, I couldn’t access anything. Who knows what happened.
I ended up having to downgrade to the previous version of the OS. (If there’s one thing I learned here, it’s a lot easier to install a new OS version and get everything working than it is to go backward to an earlier version and rebuild. I highly recommend being careful when upgrading your computer’s OS!) Through nefarious means, I was able to get pretty much everything off the hard drive, though even today I’m still rebuilding things here and there. And, as I said before, I’m pretty good about backing up.
If you’re not good about backing up, stop reading right now. Go back up your computer. We’ll wait till you get back.
Done? Now you can heave a sigh of relief. There are few things worse than a computer crashing or dying and losing your precious data — especially because it’s so avoidable with a basic backup plan in place. I have a multilevel plan that I use with the computers under my care:
• First, I constantly hit the Save command when I’m making music. Whenever I make a significant change to a piece of music or audio, I save. Some programs, like Universal Audio’s LUNA, auto-save all the time, which is a cool feature. But I also save a new version of a file, under a new name, each day when I begin work. This lets me easily jump backward in time, should the need arise. Some DAWs and other programs can do this for you.
• At the end of each work session, I do a quick backup of what I was working on. This could be to a cloud service, or I generally use an external drive.
• I have a large-capacity RAID drive that I use for more robust backup and storage. I use Time Machine on my Mac to keep a running backup to the RAID, and I also store completed projects there and other “finished” work that I don’t need to have on my computer but might still want to access.
Here’s one more “pro tip,” stolen from my good friend Craig Anderton: As I’m installing new software, libraries, and so on on a computer, I drop a copy of the installer onto the RAID. If I need to reinstall or rebuild, it’s far faster to access what I need on the drive than it is to re-download it. Once an app or library is installed, I find it’s faster to update to the latest version than it is to completely download and reinstall.
It’s all about convenience, efficiency, easy access, security, and peace of mind. This backup strategy works for me and will work for you too. Or come up with your own strategy. But whatever you choose to do, do it! Trust me, I speak from experience — you won’t regret it.
