User:Billw58/Backup Strategies

A place for folks to give share their thoughts on making a "Backup Strategies" page for the Manual.

Steve's notes fromthe forum thread:

Backing up all original recordings in a lossless (WAV/FLAC) file format is a wise thing to do regardless of the type of project. WAV and FLAC are robust formats and even in the unlikely event of a little data loss there is still a reasonably good chance of recovering most of the data. Audacity Projects on the other hand, particularly complex editing sessions can easily be turned to dust by a single small error.

For complex projects my advice would be: First: back-up any original recorded material in WAV of FLAC format. Use "Save As" periodically to create back-up copies of the project. (my-project-001, my-project-002, my-project-003, ...)

Saved Projects do not save the Undo history, so having a trail of projects can be invaluable for "restoring" to a previous version.

Use the "copy in" option or use "File > Check Dependencies" before saving the project to ensure that the project is complete.

Before starting a project, create a new folder and put everything that is related to the project (all WAV files, saved Project versions, notes to self...) into that folder. It is much easier to keep track of the project if it is all in one place.

For long term storage of a project, make a zip archive of the .AUP file and the _data folder.

For important projects, keep at least one external backup copy of both the Project and the original "source" audio files (an external hard drive can be very useful for this).

If you really don't want to lose your trousers, use a belt AND braces.

Bill said:

The problem is that different strategies will work better for different types of projects. For LP digitizing a simple Export-to-wav retains the original capture. For multi-track projects this is impractical for many reasons. To be general enough all the page could say is "back up your projects - keeping the AUP and _data folder together - to external media on a regular basis". Backup will help people who insist on renaming projects or messing with the contents of the _data folder - at least they can recover from their own incompetence. Better would be if the would RTFM and not do those things.