Data Backup, or, How I Lost Loads Of Stuff

Posted by Richard Smith - April 26, 2010 – 3:28 pm
data-backup-or-how-i-lost-loads-of-stuff

I’m really clever me. I think I’ve got it all figured out. Let me explain, I make my living from creating and selling digital computer files, as you know those files are podcasts. It’s very important that nothing bad happens to those files once we’ve made them. A lot of hard work and care goes into them and in many ways they are priceless. The audio that is captured will never happen again, it’s unique. If I were to lose them all we couldn’t just throw a few more together.

Because of how important these files are I take several precautions to protect them. When a podcast is completed it gets moved to a Completed Podcasts folder on my computer which is automatically backed up to an external drive. When that external drive is full I make a copy of it, leave one in a cupboard at home, and take one to my Parent’s house. That way I don’t have to go running back into the house if there’s a fire in the night. Because of the massive size of the files it would be too expensive for us to attempt to back them up online.

However, a little while ago we threw a spanner into the works. We started recording at a new location with a new computer. Before, if we’d recorded anything outside of Haworth then it was done on my laptop and brought straight home afterwards. Now we have Will recording and editing at his house, so there are files that live outside of my backup system. Every so often I need to go to Will’s house with a hard drive and get copies of the edited shows to bring home. That’s what I did last week and that’s where it all went wrong.

I left Will’s house with every episode of Crimes Against Food, Paddy’s TV Surprise, For Those About To Rock, two unreleased episodes of Make It So and two unreleased episodes of The Definitive Word, and Several older episodes of The Definitive Word. They are all gone now.

I tried to be too clever, I can see that now. The hard drive I used to transport the files is the drive I use to mirror my iTunes library folder. As soon as the computer detects that it is connected, it will examine the contents and make them identical to the iTunes folder on my computer. That’s me backing up! That’s me being smart! That was also me syncing a hard drive, allowing it to find the podcasts I had brought home, discover that those files were not in the iTunes folder on my computer and then, as it was told to do, deleting the podcast episodes that it thought shouldn’t be there. Bugger.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Don’t use an existing backup drive for data transfer.
2. Don’t delete your source files too soon
3. See how important backing up is!?

In the end the main things lost are the unreleased episodes of The Definitive Word so it’s annoying but it isn’t the end of the world. Quite lucky. So if you’re wondering why there hasn’t been a TDW for a while, you know who to blame.

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  • http://thoughtdrops.net Sturm

    I would change #1 on that list to: “Don’t rely on iTunes for backup.”

    As awesome as iTunes is, it was designed for the uninitiated masses, those who want things to be as simple as possible. Those who don’t care where their music files are, how unorganized they are, or even how they are named. They just want their music/podcasts/audiobooks to “play” without the hassle of organizing the files and folders under the hood.

    It’s this simplicity of design that makes iTunes to synchronize stuff without even so much as a verification dialog: “Are you sure you want iTunes to erase ### files from ?” The problem isn’t that you’re using an external drive for backing up (in fact, it’s quite laudable that you are using the external method), the problem is iTunes, in this case.

    So, having identified the problem, what’s the solution? I know you listen to/watch TWiT, so you already know they advertise Carbonite. I use it at work and it’s quite nice. You mentioned, however, that you have tons of files to backup, but this shouldn’t be a problem for Carbonite–they offer unlimited backup for one computer for a nominal fee (less than US$5 per month). I can’t see how it could be too expensive for you, unless you are charged a considerable amount for your upload bandwidth from your ISP. I’m not in the UK, so I don’t know. And even if Carbonite is too expensive, there are several other online backup services, including Mozy, that offer unlimited online backups which might work for you instead.

    Regardless of whether or not you choose to do online backups, don’t throw away that external HDD. There’s a crapload of free backup software out there which you can use in lieu of iTunes for backing up the podcasts (among other things). Most of them aren’t that great, but a handful are pretty damn good and offer better automatic syncing options than iTunes.

    Them’s my thoughts, for what they’re worth.

  • Jay

    That’s Apple for ya!