If you have used a DAW from when computer based audio multitrack became viable, you will remember when 16 bit 44.1kHz recording was the norm. File sizes, whilst large for the time, were not unmanageable, and the multitrack data from several sessions could easily be accommodated on a DVD-R disc, especially if hardware MIDI synths, samplers and sound modules were run live in the mix.
Today, we use 24 bit recording, higher sample rates, and it is considered good practice to print/bounce audio files of all our external MIDI and software instruments for easy recall. If you’re delivering finished work to a record company, chances are you will already be contractually required to do so.
24 track, for so long the norm, is no longer considered adequate for even the most modest of sessions, and now that hard drives and processors can handle hundreds of tracks, session data has grown to a point where optical media backups are no longer practical.
For some reason studios haven’t embraced the DAT tape backup technologies used in enterprise, and many studios have no backup strategy at all. If you have a backup strategy, the chances are you are copying data to an external hard drive at the end of a session. If you are smart, you will shift the responsibility for long term backup onto your clients and require them to bring their own portable backup hard drives.
But there is a better way now. It’s called Network Attached Storage (NAS), its been around for a while, but its got cheaper and better recently.
One use of a NAS drive is a file server, to allow multiple users to access and share files, but this is really only practical for more modest bit rates, and not those required by DAW software. You could store your sound libraries on a NAS but we have found it slows loading time unless you have a fast and expensive NAS.
No, what we’re talking about here is in-expensive (think slower) NAS systems to which your data can be backed up to during downtime (ie each night) and which therefore only needs large capacity, not fast transfer rates.
And here’s the real winner .. a NAS drive comprises a number of hard drives (we recommend at least 3 preferably 5) which function as one (RAID format) and which allow individual drives to fail, and to be replaced (often without a power down) without data loss! You simple create folders (shares) and point your backup software to sync data between source drives (DAW attached) and destination shares on your NAS.
This means you can incrementally replace drives, as they age, with bigger and faster models, over a period of years. Additionally, if you have some old external drives, you can connect them to your NAS to make back-ups of your NAS shares. You can have backups of your backups!
You can even do all this remotely so your NAS can live somewhere safe, and all the backup routines can be automated, synchronising audio data and files from your DAW audio drives to your NAS share!
So which NAS? Well Synology are very well thought of, but 5 drive arrays are expensive. Look at the Lacie 5Big, especially the Network 2. It’s very slow, but for downtime backup, who cares?
Thanks for reading
FairFax
No comments:
Post a Comment