Dave, thanks for finding this. As it turns out, the drive I chose is a Seagate with a 5 year warenty and cost about $96.00 for 500GB. I wouldn't want anything larger because I wouldn't wantt o congregate a lot of data in any one place against exactly the kind of catastrophic failure Bryan describes. Eventually, I will get a Mac and Time Machine and so on. K. -----Original Message----- From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Farfar Carlson Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 3:07 PM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Kevin, Here's partial text from a Brian Smart message on hard drives. Use this as your guide, since I'm not the expert that he is. Start inserted text ***** When you all buy hard drives, particularly for this type of work, you need to be picky customers. What you should not do, and I know that this is difficult, but absolutely do not base your purchasing decision primarily on cost. Hard drive quality has gone way, way down in recent years. Where once (as recent as 10 years ago), nearly every drive in the world came with a 5 year warranty, and could be counted on to, in most cases, run for 3 or 4 times that length before failing, most consumer drives now only carry a 1 year warranty, and will fail in 1 to 3 years, usually sooner. If you're buying a drive to put in to a gaming or office PC, and you routinely make backups, then go for the bargain. If you're using these drives for long term storage of information that can't be reproduced (those one time great takes in a session), or represent lots of effort (Kevin's tape conversion project), then buying cheap drives is like buying a house without insurance. It is an indescribable feeling when, years later, that drive won't work, you realize that the data is gone, and then realize that, for practical purposes, that huge block of your life that you spent creating the data is also wasted. My recommendation is that you buy one of the higher end Seagate drives. Even their consumer drives carry a 3 year warranty, which is rare now, but their enterprise class drives include 5 year warranties. The warranty represents the drive surviving the expected amount of use over the warranty period. Some people might use the drive continuously. Other people might use it occasionally, and store it in a safe the rest of the time. For me, a manufacturer's warranty period is as strong of statement as any about how long they expect the product to last, and, therefore, how well it is built. Consumer drives are only moderately stressed in home PCs. So, the 3 year warranty represents that the drive will stand up to 3 years of moderate use. The enterprise class drives are designed for servers, where the drive will be under near continuous use. Seagate warrants 5 years for those drives, under continuous use. Running one of those in a home PC or DAW, you can expect much longer operation. You can quickly identify most of Seagate's enterprise drives with the model suffix NS. The price difference isn't too bad, either. One of their 500GB enterprise class drives is about $90. 1TB will cost closer to $200. That's a bit more than the typical hard drive, but, hey, your monthly house payment would be less, too, if you didn't have to pay for insurance against fires and flood, or if they built your house out of particle board. When you're looking, rotational speed and cache don't matter, if the drive is for archival purposes. Rotational speed improves seek time, and you won't be recording 32 tracks at once to this drive, so no need to pay extra for that. Cache would be useful if you were working with high track counts, also, but you aren't. For archival purposes, you want a high quality drive with a long warranty. For system and audio drives in a DAW, you want those things, plus the high rotational speed and cache memory. End inserted text ***** Dave Created in the Audio Recording and Mixing Studios, San Jose, California ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Gibbs" <kevjazz@xxxxxxxxx> To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 12:39 Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Dave, As usual, you reminded me of something in an e-mail I may have accidentally deleted. I'll get right on the server class thing. K. -----Original Message----- From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Farfar Carlson Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 2:22 PM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation ...and as Brian proposes, stick to the server-class drives. Cost a bit more, but are meant for long life and continuous running. Dave Created in the Audio Recording and Mixing Studios, San Jose, California ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Muir" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 12:17 Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Still go for Seagate here. Had a western digital drive fail a while back. Regards, Phil Muir Accessibility Training Telephone: US (615) 713-2021 UK +44-1747-821-794 Mobile: UK +44-7968-136-246 E-mail: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.accessibilitytraining.co.uk/ -----Original Message----- From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kevin Gibbs Sent: 03 September 2010 18:24 To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Bryan, You won't believe it. A data recovery service I engaged says that they have recovered all the data from the busted drive. It was a mechanical failure. It will cost big bucks but is covered by my musical instrument insurance, distinct from my homeowner's iinsurance. Now, I need your advice on a quality SATA HD? Seagate still good? K. -----Original Message----- From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bryan Smart Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 1:45 PM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Kevin, the audio files are just .wav. If they can recover them, you can import them in to a new project. However, while you'll have the recorded audio, without the project, it will be up to you to line all of them up in terms of time. Remember that those recordings are of clips, not tracks. One track could consist of any number of clips. I won't nag you about backups, since the need is painfully obvious now, I'm sure. The thing is that, while there are many ways to backup your computer, you need to find a way that requires little effort. Backing up the computer is something that must happen frequently (once every few days, or once a week at minimum for a business). If backing up the computer is an involved project with lots of steps and screens, you won't want to do it, and you'll unconsciously avoid it. Even if you must pay more cash, get something that is as automatic as possible. I'm not sure what to suggest on Windows, though. The Mac has a tool called Time Machine built in to the OS. It's pretty powerful: kind of like a combination of system restore and a drive imaging tool. You can go back in to backups to get individual files, but you can also completely restore the computer from a backup. Since it uses incremental backups, if you want a specific file, or if you want to restore the whole computer, you can select any date when you previously ran the backup for the restore. While it's powerful, though, it is brainless to operate. You only set it up once, when you first start using it. After that, all you need to do in order to update your backup is to plug in the external hard drive. The Mac knows that the drive that has been attached is your backup drive, and automatically starts updating it with any files that have changed since the last backup. What I do is to get the backup drive out of the safe on Mondays when I get up, and attach it to the computer. I go shower, eat breakfast, and, by the time I get back, it has finished updating the backup. Then, I just disconnect the drive and put it back in the safe. It is hardly a bother working this way, so I don't feel tempted to avoid it. I have a second off-site drive that I keep in case of disaster. About once every month or so, I take my backup drive to the off-site location (can be the house of a trusted friend, family, or bank safety deposit box), leave it, and bring the one that I previously left there back home. Once home, I update its backup, and put it back in the safe. This way, if a computer dies, I never lose more than a week of data. Even in case of fire, all of my business records and projects are protected on the backup drive in the safe, and I lose no more than a week. If the backup drive itself fails, I can replace it and create new backups from the functioning computers, and lose nothing. If there is a horrific disaster that completely destroys my house, I have the off-site drive, and, with insurance, will be back up with computers in a few days, using my off-site backup, and losing no more than a month of data. This is a lot of protection for a little bit of effort. Hopefully, you can work out something similar for the future. Bryan From: Kevin Gibbs <mailto:kevjazz@xxxxxxxxx> To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 8:45 PM Subject: [ddots-l] Relationship of audio files to CWP projects in a data recovery situation Guys, The worst has happened. I had a hard disk crash and I may need to have some CWP files recovered whose audio is in the general audio folder instead of its own per project folder. If I send the drive to a pro data recovery service and they're able to recover data selectively, is there any way to direct them to the audio files that relate to the cwp file being recovered if they don't have Sonar themselves? It doubt it's possible or even practical to cherry-pick things this way. I just thought I'd ask. Kevin __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5273 (20100712) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! 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