The most cited backup strategy for data is the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This essentially means having two copies have all data locally and one copy in another location or online. For more explanation on this check backblaze.com article on backup strategy
LOCAL BACKUPS
The practical way I backup everything on my Mac as I have all my projects saved to the local drive which is then backed up by Mac time machine to an external drive (that’s two copies). I’m not paranoid enough to have another hard drive stashed at some friends place, but an online backup I think is necessary (people often state what happens if your house burns down…).
So the final line of defence is an online backup of projects, now I don’t back up everything here it’s not a full backup of the entire computer but different part of my documents and my project files are backed up on various cloud services.
If you are on Mac, Timemachine is a no-brainer it’s simple, easy to use and very effective. Some other backup apps are carbon copy cloner but this is more for copying specific files.
I don’t use PC so I can’t help you with apps for this. Just make sure it automatically backs up regular timed snapshots of your computer. Ie. Time machine can be configured to do each hour every day and deletes old backups once it gets full. aim to have double the size of your current storage that you’re wanting to back up, so let’s say you have a 500 GB hard drive in your computer and a 500 GB external hard drive (1TB total), you want to have a 2TB backup drive minimum.
Final note, make sure this drive is always connected to computer and automatically backing up. The last thing you want is your computer to crash before you remembered to back it up.
ONLINE BACKUPS
Google Drive– I use this to backup documents, user library etc relating to my personal music production
Splice studio – This is used to back up only project files (ableton, logic, reason etc). It does it automatically in the background and it seems to be an unlimited amount. I highly recommend splice and this service is free, you don’t even have to buy their samples.
In the mentality of keeping it simple I try and just use two but there are some other services that can be helpful.
Mega.nz – this service has I think the largest amount of free storage at 50 gigabytes. I usually store secondary backups of projects or finished bounces here.
Onedrive – this can be just substituted for Google Drive if you’re more of a Microsoft person.
Backblaze.com – offers full computer online backup – I do this locally so I don’t really use this service but have heard from others that its good.
Finally if you want to transfer large files between cloud services there’s an easy way to do this without using up your Internet usage or having to download it onto your hard drive again. Multcloud.com allows you to link different cloud services together and transfer files between them. I have found this quite useful when transferring sample pack exports or finished mixed files between different services.
- Day 15: Integrating Ongoing Education
- Day 14: Harmonizing Finances: A introduction to Accounting for Musicians
- Day 13: Soundtrack to Success: Goal Setting for Music Producers
- Day 12: Structure – sticking to song goals
- Day 11: Creativity – limitations and challenges
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