Not long ago, photos were taken on film, letters
were written on paper, and music was available on LPs -- all hard,
physical things. Times change. Today, photos, letters, and music have
gone "soft" -- datastreams of ones and zeros that reside on the hard
drives of a computer or other storage device. As the world goes
increasingly digital, physical formats are being abandoned for bits and
bytes, which is why I wrote last month’s editorial, "The Backup Plan,
Part One: Awareness." I wanted to be sure that readers understand how
vital it is to safeguard their digital data -- if the device those ones
and zeros are stored on is damaged or fails, there’s a good chance those
data will be lost forever.
While Part One focused on awareness of the risks,
this installment will help you reduce your exposure to those risks. In
fact, I’m glad I waited until Part One was published before writing Part
Two. Readers wrote in response to Part One, telling me how they store
and protect their music and data files, and I solicited input from
people on our writing staff and elsewhere to learn how they safeguard
their data.
There was plenty to learn from everyone.
SoundStage! Network associate editor Roger Kanno
backs up his main hard drive, which contains his music collection, to a
secondary drive -- but he keeps that second drive, like his main drive,
in his house, and it’s the only backup he has. If both his main and
backup drives fail at the same time -- not as unlikely as it seems,
partly because they reside in the same place, but mostly because, sooner
or later, all
hard drives fail -- he’ll be out of luck. Rad Bennett, our entertainment
editor, uses multiple hard drives for the redundancy (i.e.,
duplication; see below) that provides, but confessed that he hadn’t
considered what would happen if a catastrophe happened in his house and
the equipment there was destroyed. Of those who responded to Part One,
only Ayre Acoustics’ Steve Silberman stored his backups offsite.
Of the people who contacted me via e-mail, most
hadn’t considered the quality of the devices they were saving their
backups to, and no one had considered storing their backups anywhere but
at home. All in all, most people, in terms of keeping safe their music
collections and other files, are running a higher risk than they thought
they were. Granted, a photo album, or a library of CDs and LPs, would
also be destroyed in a fire, but digital data -- bunches of ones and
zeros on a storage device -- are more fragile, particularly given the
delicate nature of hard-drive technology.
As I said in Part One, there are many ways to back
up and safeguard your data, and Part Two won’t teach you all or even one
of them in any great detail. The most appropriate backup plan will vary
from system to system; what might be good for one person might not be
suitable for another. But the present article will
give you guidelines for putting together a topnotch backup system of
your own that can keep your music and data files safe.
I’ve used many different strategies over the years,
but every successful backup plan I’ve used has consisted of four
elements:
Redundancy
The hard drive is the simplest, least expensive way
to back up large amounts of data. You can buy a very capacious external
drive from Costco, Best Buy, Staples, or any computer-parts supplier,
hook it up to your USB port, and make a duplicate of your main data
drive(s). You can use a simple "copy" command to replicate the data, or
backup software that will copy the data, verify their integrity, and
keep track of what’s been backed up and what hasn’t, to make future
backups quicker and easier. Whatever method you choose to replicate the
files, the key is to not rely on a single extra hard drive, but to use
enough drives that, in the event of failure of not only your main but
your backup drives as well, you still have something that works, and
from which you can recover your data.
How many
hard drives are enough to protect against failure? You’ll get a variety
of opinions, but I prefer to be safe than sorry, and indulge in what’s
probably overkill. I use five hard drives: one main drive that contains
my entire music collection, and four others for backing up all of those
music files as well as my other irreplaceable data -- photos, videos,
financial records, every file pertaining to the SoundStage! Network
since its inception -- over and over again.
Why so many? First, the chance of five drives all
failing at once is very low. Second, having all these drives allows me
to keep two at my home at all times, and two others in secure locations
outside my home. God forbid that catastrophe ever strike my home, but if
it did, I can recover all
of my valuable files.
What’s more, each year I retire at least two of the
drives by disconnecting them and putting them on a shelf with the
current data intact (but no more added), then replacing them with two
new drives, usually with more capacity, to accommodate my constantly
growing collection of files. I do this because I’d rather have the
drives sitting idle but still in working condition, should some unlikely
failure among my current five drives mean I would have to use them. It’s
just one more level of safety. As I said before: overkill.
Granted, it’s a little inconvenient to be backing
up all the time and schlepping drives here and there, and I suspect most
people won’t go to such lengths to safeguard their information. But I’ve
experienced enough hard-drive failures over the years to know that the
extra time spent backing up is worth it, and the cost in hardware isn’t
as high as it might at first seem. Nowadays, a good-quality hard drive
that can store 1 terabyte (1TB) or more of data costs only $100. My five
drives cost me a total of about $500 -- less than some audiophiles pay
for a pair of interconnects. Paying $200 more per year for brand-new
drives is a pittance for the safety and peace of mind it affords me.
Variety
Redundant hard drives are a staple of my current
backup plan, but I don’t rely on them exclusively -- I like to vary the
storage mediums. Between major backups to hard drives, I copy new data
to DVD-Recordable (DVD-R) discs and store them on a shelf. I use DVD-Rs
because they’re cheap and convenient (I used to use CD-Rs). If some new
technology comes along that’s fitting for this purpose -- recordable
Blu-ray is likely, when the price comes down -- I’ll probably use that
for these interim backups.
Obviously, you can’t back up nearly as much data to
a DVD-R as you can to a hard drive -- a single-layer DVD-R holds 4.7GB,
about the equivalent of six CDs, or less than 0.5% of what a 1TB hard
drive can hold -- but it’s usually enough to back up as much new data as
I’ll create in a few days or a week, whether documents, photos, or music
files. If I need more storage space, I use more discs.
Quality
Redundancy and variety aren’t enough. Regardless of
how many copies you have of your data, you should always use
high-quality storage devices, particularly hard drives, that are less
susceptible to damage and failure, even if they cost a little more. The
reason for this should be obvious, but it’s worth stating: Backups are
for safety should your hardware fail; however, you’re always better off
avoiding failure in the first place.
But there’s little consensus with regard to what’s
"best." Quality can vary, even within the lines of well-regarded brands
you can usually trust. Occasionally, even good companies can release
clunkers or have quality-control problems (witness Toyota).
Choosing the most reliable storage device can be tough; all I can tell
you is what I’ve learned.
Over the years, I’ve found drives from Seagate and
LaCie to be very unreliable; they crash prematurely, without having been
subjected to any kind of abuse. Luckily, all of the drives from these
companies that I’d bought were under warranty when they failed, so I
could get them fixed or replaced -- still, I lost all the data I’d
stored on them. In contrast, I have yet to have a Western Digital drive
fail (currently, I have six), even though I know that, if I continue to
use them, they eventually will -- hence my early-retirement plan for
hard drives. When I buy my next drive, it’ll probably be a Western
Digital. All that said, I’ve read reports by people who’ve had the
opposite experience: no trouble with LaCie and Seagate drives, and
various problems with WDs. My suggestion: research for yourself, and
experiment.
As for DVD-Rs, I’ve found no correlation between
brand name, price, and quality. I’ve bought big-name discs that cost a
lot of money, as well as no-name discs costing much less, and have
experienced the same kinds of read and write errors with all of them.
That’s why, when it comes to backing up data on DVD-Rs, I just keep a
lot of discs on hand and copy my data over and over again, to ensure
that, if I need to recover data, I’ll eventually find at least one disc
that’s readable. That said, I still tend to buy brand-name discs (e.g.,
Maxell, Verbatim) if the price is reasonable, but if I see a spindle of
discs at a really low price from a brand I don’t know, I won’t hesitate
to try them out.
Consistency
You can use the best drives and discs in the world
and have places to store them on- and offsite, but your data are safe
only if they’ve been backed up in the first place. That is, if you don’t
take the time and trouble to perform consistent and timely backups, you
could lose all the data you’ve accumulated since the time of your last
backup and the moment your main drive failed. It happens all the time --
a hard drive fails, and the owner immediately thinks, When was my last backup?
Often, it’s a lot longer ago than the owner thought.
There are no hard-and-fast rules about how often
you should back up; it mostly depends on how much data you accumulate,
and when. On days when you add no new data to your drive at all, it’s
not worth doing a backup; other days, whole GB of new data might land
there that you’d be wise to back up right away.
If you’re unaware of how much data you’re backing
up, you’d be wise to use a schedule, even if it means sometimes doing a
backup that isn’t worth it -- better safe than sorry. All modern backup
software lets you schedule backup times so that you can "set it and
forget it." If you regularly accumulate new data, scheduling a backup
every day or two isn’t unreasonable. I’d never go longer than a week.
Because I’m highly aware of the need to back up
data and know precisely how much new data are being added to my drive at
any time, I do a backup whenever I’ve accumulated enough data and know
full well that I’ll kick myself silly if the hard drive fails at that
moment. One day, I backed up three times while working -- I was putting
so much new stuff on my drive that I didn’t want to wait till the end of
the day, just in case something went wrong. As I said: overkill. But I’m
protected.
Putting it all together
I use good storage devices (quality); I don’t use
only one type of backup media (variety); I make many copies, some stored
at my house, others offsite (redundancy); and I ensure that backups are
done regularly as new data accumulate (consistency). These elements
safeguard not only my music collection, but my collections of documents,
photographs, videos, and any other files stored on my hard drive. To
some, my fanatical approach to data backup might seem excessive. But
knowing that I can recover my data, even in the event of the worst
catastrophe, reassures me that nothing important will get lost -- ever.
In a world in which more and more things are going
digital, data protection is vital. If you haven’t backed up lately,
here’s hoping this article has convinced you to do it right now, before
it’s too late. Because, sooner or later, that hard drive will fail.
