The case for a cloud backup system of your audio workstation.
If you are a project studio, a live performer who uses a computer, or any other person who uses a computer to put on a show, having a rock solid backup plan will help your show run smoothly.
Here are examples of things that can happen:
- You’re working away on an audio project and a hard drive fails. Months or even years of projects disappear- gone forever!
- A hard drive or laptop goes missing or is broken while on the road.
- Maybe you’re at a gig and you realize you have a software issue and don’t have drivers handy.
Having a data plan helps avoid all of these issues and protects your state of mind. Using a cloud drive to store project backups, drivers and audio libraries can be helpful in a pinch. It also has a huge bonus, you can share files with collaborators.
Who this article is for: If you’ve been using cloud drives for a while, you likely know everything in the article. This article was written for non-techy users and it attempts to detail solutions for many of the pitfalls that can occur. Once you are aware of the solutions below, it’s as easy as saving and sharing. Simple.
Backup Plan – Step One – Put your files in the cloud.
Using cloud storage is very freeing. No more worrying about hard drives, thumb drives etc. Just save to the cloud, and share with your friends. Here is a quick guide to a system I use to access a collection of files from a smaller travel laptop while traveling the world. Keeping in mind the 2TB limit of the personal DropBox plan, this system works for anyone with a small to medium amount of data. 2TB should be big enough to save many audio projects, multi-track mixing projects, Ableton Live projects, and several sample libraries. Once this data is synchronized to the cloud, saved projects will automatically update in the cloud so you’ll have access from any device anywhere in the world.
1. Install dropbox on all your devices: Computers, phone, tablet.
The 2 TB Plan is big enough to store several recording projects, lots of samples, and mixdowns of projects.
2. When you install Dropbox on your computer, they create a folder called Dropbox. Save your music projects in this folder. It will synchronize a copy of everything into the cloud. Insta-backup because its now in the cloud!
3. Next, you can login to DropBox on your phone, computer or tablet. You can look at any of the files that have been saved to the cloud. You can open files (like audio mixdowns & images) on your phone or in your web browser.
Backup Plan – Step Two, The backup of the backup
5. This is the backup of the cloud backup. Anything can happen. To be truly backed up, the contents of your cloud drive should exist on a separate offline backup. The cloud doesn’t die the way a hard drive can. So you don’t need to be worried about your files disappearing due to a hard drive failure. But, One can do something stupid. For example, delete the wrong thing (or everything), or potentially, you can get hacked and someone could delete your entire Dropbox folder. Highly unlikely, but possible. Note, there is a undelete feature in Dropbox where you can restore deleted items for a number of weeks, so Dropbox does add a layer of protection for accidental deletions.
That said, buying a 2TB hard drive, and using it to create a copy of everything from your dropbox folder once in a while is a sure way to have one copy in the indestructible cloud and another copy backed-up offline.
Important: Not for Active sessions
I don’t use the DropBox folder to hold projects i’m currently working with. For example, if I’m working in a DAW session mixing a song, or playing in front of an audience with Ableton Live, I have samples and project files on a separate SSD that has nothing to do with the dropbox folder. I don’t want my files saving synchronizing to the web when i need my computer to be functioning quickly. When DropBox sees a newly saved file in your Dropbox folder (on your computer), it will automatically attempt to save a copy of the new file to the cloud. This takes up CPU and RAM of your computer. Most people who work with audio projects need every bit of CPU and RAM to keep their DAW running smoothly so it can play smooth audio. Generally speaking, you don’t want your computer doing anything else during sessions. So you can turn off synchronization while you are using audio software, or work on a super fast SSD drive.
Sharing and Collaboration
If you are logged into dropbox on your phone or computer, you can select a file or folder and share it with an email contact. Dropbox will send the email to your buddy and he can then access anything you put in that shared folder. – collaboration! You are now sharing a folder. (put mixes, stems, or shared project files in there). As long as you both see the shared folder, you can add large full resolution stems, save mixes, lyrics, production notes, and other ideas into that folder. I often will have a folder for a band, and organize it with jam session recordings, demos, recording projects, artwork & marketing photography, live videos and anything else related to that project. Once everything for a project is uploaded to the cloud drive, accessing and sharing files from anywhere in the world and from any device is as easy as logging in.
What about security in the cloud?
Plenty of websites, apps and web services have been hacked. While there is no guarantee that your cloud storage won’t get hacked, it’s not much different from anything else connected to the internet. Your computer and some of the web sites you visit require a user name and a password to login. Dropbox, Google Drive and others are the same. If you have concerns about security of the items you are hosting on the cloud, perhaps don’t host sensitive stuff on the cloud. Keep in mind the same logic should apply to your computer and phone. Anything connected to the internet can get hacked.
Security issue aside, if your life’s creative work in on these files, it just makes sense to have a offline copy. The best way to make sure you don’t lose anything is to also backup your cloud drive.
What about hard drive space?
What if i have a 500GB hard drive in my laptop and 2TB of cloud storage. Does the cloud keep a copy of 2 Terabytes of data on my computer, phone and tablet?
Answer: No, it can’t save more data than you have space to store on your computer. It is possible to fill up your hard drive before you reach your 2TG cloud limit. There is a way to avoid this. There are synchronization settings in the Dropbox app which will tell DropBox to keep only certain folders on your local computer hard drive, and keep the rest of the files ONLY in the cloud. You can download anything to your computer anytime you are connected to the internet, but the idea is to keep your computer hard drive free of too much clutter so that it can run smoothly. A full system hard drive is a sure way to slow down your computer. Selective Synchronization is the solution to this issue. For example, you can store 100GB locally on your computer, and let the rest reside in the cloud.
I usually have items I need to access:
- current project backup (live working version on a fast SSD)
- drivers
- relatively current projects
- project artwork, photography, album covers or other marketing files that I might want to email or share with promoters and venues.
Items to avoid saving to a cloud drive:
Huge video files. If you take hours of 4K video for a project, it does not make sense to save it to the cloud. I will take forever to upload to the cloud and just as much to download the files. Plus, the time it would take to synchronize several terabytes to the cloud is very cumbersome. Transferring large files on the web is done with file transfer websites like WeTransfer.com. This is different from accessing or sharing a working file or folder in the cloud.