Re: New Thread: Preferred Formats

So, a heads-up for all like Glen (and myself) on this kind of hard work --- don't lose it! That is, keep BACKUPS. Moving to RAID 5 is good, and having a second hard drive for backup is also good.

As someone who's maintained huge data sets over the years, a few words of advice for everyone on this mail-list (then you can all tell me what to do with my advice hehe!).

1. Keep backups! Lots of them. Your hard disk WILL FAIL at some point and you WILL lose ALL the data on it -- that's ALL OF IT.

2. Don't rely *JUST* on a second hard drive for backup. If it's in the same machine, there are many ways that a failure will take out both drives at once (think power supply). Even if it's in a distinct machine in a different room, there are risks. Example (really happened): One company kept an online backup that automatically updated every night. Disgruntled employee deleted a whole bunch of critical files. Trouble was, he did this on Friday, and thwn someone noticed on Monday the "automatic" backup had carefully updated the backup to match -- including deletion of all those files!

3. Keep off-site backups. In the office. Give them to a neighbor. If the worst should happen and you lose your home, you still have all that stuff.

4. If you use software to make backups, make sure you have a copy of it on non-backup media! I once had a call from a friend who needed to do a restore, but the only copy of the restore software was on the backup!!! This also applies to other stuff like the OS.

And if anyone wants to know if I practice what I preach: I maintain a server with hardware RAID 5, with a nightly automated backup to near-line hard disk on a second machine. Once a week I update a set of tape backups that I keep offsite at my place of work. I also keep  subset of my server on DVD+RW optical disks. Paranoid? Perhaps ... but I've yet to lose data.

Ok, off my pulpit! Back to enjoying the music!

--Tim

> ------------Original Message------------
> From: Glen <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Sun, Jan-2-2005 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [AT] New Thread: Preferred Formats
>
> Having read all the replies...
> 
> I started (long ago) using EAC & LAME alt-preset-standard.  Then
> alt-preset-extreme.  Then, well over a year ago, alt-preset-insane.
> 
> Hard drives are cheap enough.  If I were doing it all over again 
> (15,000
> MP3s), I would stick strictly to WAVE.  Unfortunately, I can't go with 
> FLAC
> since I am heart-set on my 2 trusty and beloved AudioTrons, and my 
> older
> 20GB Archos Jukebox needs MP3s (I bought it when it first came out, and
> still use it today.  It is great when travelling!)
> 
> Every MP3 I have was created with EAC & LAME, then I used MP3Gain
> (http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/) to adjust the "standardized" volume 
> to
> 89db.  Note, for those who don't know, MP3Gain is *NOT* 
> "normalization".
> That is a crude and ineffective sound-adjustment.  MP3Gain analyzes the 
> song
> to determine how loud "it sounds, on average", and adjusts accordingly 
> -- in
> a non-invasive way (so it can be done over and over, then un-done, and 
> not
> affect the encoded quality of the MP3).
> 
> All my tags are meticulously created using ID3-TAGit.de...
> 
> The result? I have spent so much time on my collection, that I keep an 
> extra
> 100GB hard-drive in my closet with a periodic backup (and incremental
> backups of my server on my workstation hard drive).
> 
> My next goal: A low-power, RAID-5 server with at least 500 GB of 
> storage,
> for all music and my increasingly-valuable digital photograph 
> collection
> (also cross-backed up on 2 drives).
> 
> Glen
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Jay" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 10:16 PM
> Subject: [AT] New Thread: Preferred Formats
> 
> 
> > All:
> >
> > I was just wondering ... of those who read this list, what format / 
> sample
> > rate etc do you use and why? Speaking for myself, I elected to rip
> > everything to WAV as I use the ATs in fairly good home audio systems; 
> I
> > have a separate drive to which I rip the content to MP3 at 192 (which 
> I
> > find to be a reasonable compromise between fidelity and file size as 
> well
> > as manageable for portable devices). I elected WAV as ny de-facto 
> standard
> > as I figured if I was going to archive my collection, given the
> > affordability of drives (and getting more so every year) I should 
> stick
> > with the best fidelity possible.
> >
> > I only ask the question because I have read with some interest 
> comments
> > about the quality of the DACs in the AT and I wonder how much of the
> > grousing about them comes from playing back (heavily) compressed 
> files and
> > expecting uncompressed results. I don't want to start a flame 
> war...but to
> > my ears...playing WAV files using the on-board DACs is actually very 
> good
> > overall.
> >
> > Just wondering...
> >
>