A big question that’s been around in the recording industry for a while now is what backup strategy should be followed to store the recordings. Especially on those days when a hard drive fails and no backup copy was made at the end of the session. How do we avoid this, or at least be safer managing our work? 

Preserving records has changed a lot throughout the years. It started by making copies of the master tape or the multitrack tapes onto other tapes and keeping them all in a controlled environment. This expensive and time-consuming task has evolved thanks to technology, allowing archives to transfer those tapes into newer, faster, and more reliable media. Even nowadays we see the changes happening, moving from hard drives to solid-state drives and to the more modern cloud storage. Although these media have become more robust and the data can be copied quickly and unaltered to other storages, any physical storage can and WILL fail. So, how can we keep our recordings safe? Simple — follow the Rule of Three.

Omne Trium Perfectum*

The rule of three is a long time computer-person rule of thumb. It’s also called the Backup 3-2-1 rule. It states that you should have 3 copies of your data (your production data and 2 backup copies) on two different media with one copy off-site.

For example: if you work from your computer’s drive, you should have a copy of your work on an external drive and a second copy on another drive outside your working environment. 

By doing a bit of research you will find there are many iterations and variations of this rule depending on how safe you want to be. Thankfully, nowadays it is possible and cheap to follow any backup strategy to protect your work.

Let’s go through some recommendations on how to choose your different media drives when we follow the rule of three.

*Everything that comes in threes is perfect. 

Production Drive

Keeping your production data, or work-in-progress data, in an external drive is a good strategy. It helps the computer to separate two activities: the processing and the reading/writing. 

Your software is installed in your computer’s drive and although the processing is carried out by the CPU, it still has to read the files from the drive in order to run it. When we are recording or mixing in our DAW, we are adding the extra task of reading and writing the new information in real time on the same drive. Computers nowadays are very powerful and efficient and they are able to manage all these processes without breaking a sweat. But by separating the data from your sessions onto a different drive it will help your computer to run more smoothly and not share resources between the software and the data. Hence, it also elongates the life of your computer’s drive and keeps your data safe in case of a computer crash. Your recording sessions will be easily accessed from your external drive and allow you to continue your work elsewhere.

It doesn’t need to be an external USB drive. If you have a laptop with a DVD drive that you are not using or you have a Desktop computer you can most likely replace that DVD drive or add an extra hard drive for all your sessions.

Newer SSD drives are a good choice for production since they are very fast and although they are more expensive the more storage they have, you can always keep it somewhere in budget for a few current projects, and get bigger hard drives for the backups.

First Backup Drive

The first copy of your work should go into a backup drive. The purpose of this copy is having a recovery point in case the production drive gets affected or stops working. By having it nearby and up to date you can make sure that if something goes wrong, you can go back to the latest version of your work. Just make sure it doesn’t live right next to your computer all the time and you keep it in a safe place.

There are different strategies you can follow for this drive. If you are on Mac you can take advantage of Time Machine utility to backup your data onto an external drive. You can also invest in a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system and add an extra level of safety by configuring it to manage the backup more efficiently. In essence it is a small computer whose only task is to backup your data and it can do it in different ways so there are always recovery options in case something goes south.

Second Backup

This one is the tricky one because, based on the 3-2-1 rule, it should be kept in a completely different location from your working space. If you are wondering why that is, just put yourself in the worst case scenario where your studio burns down, you get robbed or a thunderstorm fries your drives. You definitely want to keep a copy away from that same spot.

The question you might be asking yourself is, how do I keep this copy? Do I take the second drive regularly to the studio and make a backup? This can definitely be an option but you will be assuming two risks: transportation of the drive (accidents happen) and not having a completely up to date drive unless you bring the drive with you every day.

Another option that modern technology and fast internet connection have brought to the table is cloud storage. Applications like Dropbox, Amazon Drive or iCloud are some of the options available, and all of them allow you to save your data onto a drive far far away from you, through the network, and even get it sync with other machines logged in with your account. Two copies in different locations automatically. But where is the catch? The news in the 21st century is full of stories of security breaches, accounts information being compromised and hackers asking for ransom to recover your data. As you can see, relying on these services for backing up your projects is a risk as well.

So in this case the real question is what risk are you willing to take and make sure you communicate it to your clients when you are working with them. At the end of the day it’s also their data you are managing.

Organization is key

Finally, the last thing to consider is how to organise your backups. Whether you schedule a period at the end of your working sessions to make your copies, or automate an overnight computer routine, or rely on your cloud storage service to do it in real time, you need to create a habit to make sure you have a robust data structure that is bombproof. 

Don’t leave it for later or think your drive will never fail. Any machine, just like any other physical thing, wears off with time and it will fail in the most undesired moment.

If you haven’t backed up your work at least three times before you finish reading these lines, what are you waiting for? It is as important as using the latest plugins or having a template for mixing fast. All your studio work depends on storage devices and it is something that we don’t pay enough attention to until something goes wrong (trust me, I’ve been there). You don’t want to go in front of a client and tell them that their bright performance recorded with the most care has disappeared forever.

Find your workflow and backup your work. Your music deserves it.