Just jammed a 1TB external drive

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Kromasome
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Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Kromasome »

And surprisingly so far I'm not that devastated about it. Yes, that is likely to change over time as I look for stuff I can no longer access but the fact that I've lost around 200 mostly unfinished tracks is somewhat liberating (I know 200 might sound a lot, but my method is to get an idea going fast, flesh out most of the track also pretty quickly then give it time (sometimes months) to come back with fresh ears to see if it sounds any good - in the meantime I keep starting new tracks).

It's almost as if it will force me to set things up in a more logical and hopefully more productive way (had shit all over the place on that drive). I don't have anyone waiting on anything from me (ie no paid work), so I can almost start with a clean slate and see where it goes without any pressure. I'm too close to my tracks to really know if I had started developing my own sound (does that even matter when you're 38??), but if I was this could be a bit of a set back, but it's not the end of the world.

One of the things I will miss is the last couple of months just making sounds and recording them to audio for use at a later stage (a lot of which I hadn't used yet). But there's also nothing stopping me from continuing that process again starting from scratch.

Luckily I have backups of a lot of photos (would have been gutted if not) but never did it for the majority of my tracks (no real reason why, just never did it). So yes, going forward I plan on researching a decent backup system just in case I ever one day make some stuff that I'd prefer not to lose...

The reloading of the big sample libraries is giving me some nightmares though (I wish it was possible to just plug in the Komplete Ultimate hard drive and use it directly from that).

This is all before I've sounded out any professionals to see what they can do, so it might still be recoverable, but it doesn't sound too good. Someone in Sydney said they were quoted $2500 for data recovery once - I don't think anything I had on there is worth that much!

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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Blocktechno »

so far as music is concerned - fuck it, just start again. I purposfully deleted everything once. felt good. didn't help me in anyway but if definitely felt good

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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by borg »

had the same thing many moons ago. putting the HD in the freezer for a day, then putting it back in the computer worked like a charm! at least long enough to recover all data and put it on a new drive. worth a shot...
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Kromasome
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Kromasome »

borg wrote:had the same thing many moons ago. putting the HD in the freezer for a day, then putting it back in the computer worked like a charm! at least long enough to recover all data and put it on a new drive. worth a shot...
Thanks borg, gave that a go but didn't help unfortunately. Hopefully someone can get it going without opening it up.

Still might start from scratch with the music even if someone does get it going.

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Hepta
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Hepta »

That happened to me too a while back, lost a shitload of projects and samples etc. Sucks.

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Lost to the Void »

Hepta wrote:That happened to me too a while back, lost a shitload of projects and samples etc. Sucks.
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over9000
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by over9000 »

ah shit! i know the feel, once lost a 1tb harddrive with my whole dj collection from various genres on it..
I had some backups, but had a hard time getting all the stuff again.
Never heard about the freezer trick, i still have that HD, going to try!
although it sounds like some internet myth, i mean what can a freezer do to broken transistors/platines/cables?
About your 200 unfinished projects, id be glad they are gone tbh. I have 4 unfinished tracks and its already bugging me to work on something else..

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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by [wesellboxes] »

Anyone recommend cloud storage for backing up files? Don't mind paying but there will be some copyright material, mainly purchased tracks.

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WOLF!
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by WOLF! »

I had some issues in the past with some family photographs that got lost by corrupt data on a harddisk.
Happily I could recover most off them but I can imagine that losing data can be a real nightmare.

I recently purchased a new audio dedicated pc for my home studio and have a separate harddisk for audio projects.
Every time before I close down the pc I backup that project harddisk to another internal HD for backup storage.
I work with Ableton and save my projects with collect all so the projects are complete.
Then a few times a year I make a backup off the backup disk to a external harddisk.

About unfinished projects; it's was a problem that I had on my previous system.
I made a selection off projects that could be worth finishing and migrated those to the new system.
All the rest is binned in some other directory on the backup disk and is only one step away for getting deleted permanently.

Cloud storage could be nice but I don't know much about it and I think my system works quite well.
A NAS or server could be another option but I think it's only fail safe in conjunction with a UPS.
My brother in law works in the IT sector and they had quite a few dead NAS harddisks coming from power failures appearing while writing data is being written to the harddisk.

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Kromasome
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by Kromasome »

WOLF! wrote:I had some issues in the past with some family photographs that got lost by corrupt data on a harddisk.
Happily I could recover most off them but I can imagine that losing data can be a real nightmare.

I recently purchased a new audio dedicated pc for my home studio and have a separate harddisk for audio projects.
Every time before I close down the pc I backup that project harddisk to another internal HD for backup storage.
I work with Ableton and save my projects with collect all so the projects are complete.
Then a few times a year I make a backup off the backup disk to a external harddisk.

About unfinished projects; it's was a problem that I had on my previous system.
I made a selection off projects that could be worth finishing and migrated those to the new system.
All the rest is binned in some other directory on the backup disk and is only one step away for getting deleted permanently.

Cloud storage could be nice but I don't know much about it and I think my system works quite well.
A NAS or server could be another option but I think it's only fail safe in conjunction with a UPS.
My brother in law works in the IT sector and they had quite a few dead NAS harddisks coming from power failures appearing while writing data is being written to the harddisk.
Yeah I'm also now looking and thinking about the best way to backup data that I actually want to keep. And like I said in the original post, I also need to develop a folder structure for my tracks/samples that makes sense from a usability sense and for ease of backing up.

Does anyone have well structured approach to file/folder/disk setup to keep things really well organised? Those memes with all the v1, v1.1, v1.1final, v1.2final, v1.2final-A etc file names are sort of funny but very accurate in my case (I'm guessing I'm not the only one??).

I think I have now got through my "must have all vst's and samples" phase to now realise that less is more, and it's not what you have but how you use it - and that the real gold comes when you put in a decent amount of work (rather than spending a stupid amount of time trying to find the silver bullet that will instantly make cracking tunes). But even with this thought, there will still be lots of files and folders that will accumulate over time, so I want to take the time up front now to set things up properly.

Thanks all for you thoughts and advice so far

(still haven't given the hard drive to any professionals yet, so I'm still unsure if I've lost it all but will find out when I pull a finger out and get someone to look at it).

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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by intrusav »

I had the main harddrive of an old laptop crash on me before.
I was able to fit it to an external case and access it by usb. I downloaded software that recovered every file that was ever on it, including deleted files that were long forgotten.

Pretty sure it was free software because I wouldn't bother pay money for something that would only get used once.

Only problem was that it ignores conventional filenames. I'm not that deep into tech so don't know the correct terms...

1tb would take a fuckin' lifetime to sift through...

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WOLF!
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Re: Just jammed a 1TB external drive

Post by WOLF! »

I have 5 HD's in my new audio dedicated computer. I mention audio dedicated because that makes a huge difference in accumulating files (and porn ;)) over time.

My HD setup is like:
C:\BOOT - 500 GB SSD for fast loading of OS and programs.
D:\SAMPLES - 500 GB SSD for fast loading of samples.
E:\PROJECTS - 500 GB SATA 7200RPM WD BLACK - All Ableton project are on this disk.
I save them by year of production but because I restarted making music from 2016 I only have a 2016 and 2017 folder.
F:\CACHE - 500 GB SATA 7200RPM WD BLACK - Cache disk because SSD's don't like many read/write cycles (it's seem better now but I guess I'm a bit old fashioned :)).
G:\BACKUP - Backup disk off C, D and E harddisk's.
I burn images of the boot disk so I can restore very quickly without 2 day's of installing OS, drivers, DAW, other programs and VST's.


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