Back That Thang Up!
photo courtesy todrickmoore.com
(Originally posted April 7, 2015)
I remember the day. The day my HP Pavilion dv7 laptop died. It was a Tuesday, a humid Tuesday. I was working on something very important and enlightening while drinking a cup of coffee.
All of a sudden the screen went blue. I thought it just failed and I needed to restart. I power down and thought all I needed to do was start the laptop back up again. I thought wrong. The blue screen came back and I heard very weird noises coming from the computer. I tried everything I could before giving it to a friend who knows more about computers than me. My friend couldn't fix it and gave me the news...."She's gone." My precious Pavilion had died. "Can you re-cover the hard drive?" I said. "I cannot. When was the last time you backed this thang up?"
It had been over a year since I backed it up. I proceeded to cry. All of my projects and personal information were gone.
When I got a replacement I vowed never again to lose all of my work due to a computer/hard drive failure. So I did some research and found some great articles and a bonus chapter from a book I purchased from Focal Press called The Audio Expert. I followed the author's writing on how to setup my new laptop which would make file management better and make backing up my files easier.
I setup my hard drive into 7 partitions. That may sound like a lot, but it's really not and it makes file management much easier. Here are how my partitions break down:
1 - System drive: contains the OS
2 - Apps: where I install software
3 - Data: documents only
4 - Temp: internet downloads and temporary files
5 - Audio: DAW and multitrack files
6 - Media: pictures and videos
7 - Music: Itunes library
I partitioned my drive using EaseUS Partition Master. It's really an easy software to use and it's FREE! You do need to plan out what you think each partition size will be but you can adjust later if you make an error like I did.
With my hard drive partitioned, it makes backing that thang up really easy. I use SyncToy which is a free software from Microsoft. In it you setup "Pairs" which is a location on your hard drive that will sync with a location on your external hard dive and those two locations are paired together. I have it where my external hard drive mirrors my internal hard drive, so on my external drive there are 6 folders that are named Apps, Data, Temp, Audio, Media and Music. Each folder on the external is paired with the corresponding partition. When I run SyncToy everything on that partition syncs to the corresponding folder on the external. I have a couple backup drives that I keep current all setup the same way.
That's it! If my laptop dies, I can be back up and running with all my files on a new laptop the same day.
Hope that helps! ....PC users anyway :) If you use Apple, let me know how you Back that Thang Up.
- Cheers
Links:
The Audio Expert bonus material: http://www.routledge.com/cw/winer...
The Audio Expert Computer chapter PDF: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks...
EaseUS Partiton Master Software: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm
SyncToy: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155