User:Billw58/Backup Strategies
- Peter 4May12: this is beginning to read like "the parable of the wise and foolish virgins" ;-)>
If you have not already done so, please read the Audacity Projects page, taking particular note of the "Four rules for keeping your Audacity project happy". Backups may not help you if you damage your project by breaking those rules.
Audacity has very robust crash recovery and in most cases will be able to recover your work in case of a power failure, computer crash or crash of Audacity itself. The wise user does not rely on crash recovery, and has appropriate backups in place for those rare circumstances where Audacity's crash recovery can't do the job.
The wise user also knows that hard drives can crash destroying all data; she makes regular backups to external storage.
The nature of audio editing, especially when it involves recording live audio, means that daily backups may not be sufficient. There are also things you can do that are specific to Audacity that will make it easier to make appropriate backups.
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Always make an external copy of your raw data (original recording), never work with the original material! |
Contents
Create a folder in which to store your project
Many users prefer to create a new folder on their hard drive in which to store their project; the AUP file and the _data folder are both inside this folder making it easy to keep them together if you need to move them to another location on your hard drive. This also creates a place to store other files associated with the project such as exported WAV backup files and production notes.
Be safe—copy all external files into your project
Before importing a WAV or AIFF file into your project, on the Preferences tab Import / Export, choose "Make a copy of uncompressed audio files before editing (safer)". Later, when you save your project you will not need to think about including those files in the backup.
Backing up simple projects
A simple project is one that consists of one stereo or mono track; examples would be digitizing LPs or cassettes, recording an audio book or editing a recorded interview.
Once you have completed the original recording(entire LP or cassette, audio book chapter, interview etc.) click to export the entire track as WAV, AIFF or FLAC. Save the file in the same folder as the project (not in the _data folder, use the folder that contains the _data folder and AUP file). If anything bad happens to your project (such as a disastrous edit that you can't recover from) you can always go back to your original capture by starting a new project and importing the WAV, AIFF or FLAC file.
A user was digitizing his LP collection; he applied aggressive noise reduction and click removal to an LP and exported the result. Some time later he realized that he had damaged the audio in his zeal to get rid of the noise, click and pops. Unfortunately, he had not saved his original recordings and had to record the LP again.
Backing up complex projects
A complex project is one which consists of more than one track; examples of such a project would be a multi-track music production with overdubs, voice mixed with music on another track or an interview where the two parties are on separate tracks.
Periodically click on to save a version of your project with a different but meaningful name. How often you do this will depend on several factors. The purpose of these multiple projects is to give you a version of your project that you can go back to in the unlikely event that Audacity or your computer crashes while you are in the midst of recording or editing. In most cases Audacity will be able to recover your project in the state it was in just before the crash but there are exceptional cases where Audacity will not be able to do this. Having a previous version that was not being actively worked on at the time of the crash will let you start from that version rather from the beginning. This is especially important if you are engaged in overdubbing; losing a good performance due to a computer crash or power failure is beyond frustrating. These periodic backups also give you a known state of your project to go back to in the event of a disastrous edit from which you cannot recover.
A band was doing a multi-track recording session; all went well with the recordings and they had a nice multi-track project with vocals, drums, bass and guitar on separate tracks. During mixdown they applied equalization and compression to the tracks and added reverb to the vocals. Some time later they realized that they had put too much reverb on the vocals. Unfortunately they had not saved a version of the project before they added the reverb. There was no way to remove the reverb from the vocals so their only recourse was to record the vocal again.
Incremental backups
Archiving finished projects
One safe and sure way of keeping your project files and folders together is to make a zip archive. Save the zip file on an external drive, CD-R or DVD-R if it will fit, or, better yet, both. If you ever need to revisit the project you can unzip it and continue editing, overdubbing or whatever.
Mac users—use Time Machine
Time Machine will save hourly backups for the previous 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and monthly backups for the past year. If this frequency of backup is not good enough (for example when actively overdubbing), periodically save versions of the project as outlined above in "Backing up complex projects".
Notes from the forum thread that started this all
Steve's notes from the 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.
