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I've recently seen a couple of troubling errors from my BIAB disk. I use BIAB on live gigs, so I would appreciate best advice on backing this disk up in a way that gives me a very quick recovery. The little disk is actually pretty big as I run the 2014 Audiophile version, 931G.

Thanks

A 1TB portable drive should be around 80 bucks. They can run off USB power.

If you're using it on gigs,,,,, I would suggest a dedicated laptop if you don't already have one.

Load the full version into the laptop.... so you will need a 2TB drive. Or, get a small desktop for the gigs... add a second hard drive specifically for BB.

That's most likely how I would do it if I was gigging and making money and needed a fool proof live rig......


The other option...... burn the songs and just use the wave file of the song in a player in a lappy. Not nearly the huge HD space hog, and it will work just fine.

I've never been a fan of testing the Murphy rules..... keep it as simple as possible.....waves and a player in a lappy do that.

I gig for a living and would never trust one way to play my backing tracks.

There are many ways to do this, and what is right for me may not apply to you, but here is what I do.

I make high quality mp3 files and put them on a laptop. I have an old ThinkPad, as it doesn't take much to run mp3 files.

For redundancy I bring and boot up a second laptop (this one a 2002 ThinkPad that just won't die).

I've been working on laptops since 2002 on the gig, and in all that time I've had to go to the spare 3 times.

1. the 7 year old hard drive started making noise and that worried me - I replaced it the next day
2. The CMOS battery failed and it wouldn't boot - a $4.95 item at Radio Shack - replaced it the next day
3. The screen developed lines in it, while under warranty - I didn't need to go to the second computer, but did anyway

In all 3 cases, I just switched the USB cable from the USB->AUDIO interface from one computer to the next and went on with the show.

I learned the redundancy lesson almost the hard way. I was playing with two redundant, hardware, floppy disk loading sequencers but with a 10 space rack full of sound modules. This was probably in 1998 or so. One of the modules was a sampler that loaded from a floppy disk - it had my electric bass (I sampled my own), a snare drum L-R pair so rolls don't sound like a machine gun, steel drum (pan), and numerous cymbals and other percussion sounds on it. I probably used it on 200 of the then 300 songs we did.

I was playing the last Christmas party of the year and whenever I touched the rack, the sampler rebooted itself and reloaded the samples from the floppy (took about 2 minutes). So I was careful not to touch it for the rest of the gig.

Next day I took it in to the local instrument repairman, he put a probe in it, sparks flew everywhere and he said I'd have to send it back to the factory.

The problem with that is the factory was closed from Christmas to after New Years day, and we had a big New Years Eve gig coming up. In Florida on NYE the demand far exceeds the supply, and we are usually booked 2 years in advance for well over 5 times our normal Saturday night rate. There was no way to re-sequence and re-balance 200 songs using the existing sound modules in a week so I had to find a replacement. And there was no way to find a band to cover us, and everyone else that is any good is also booked way in advance (I could book 5 years in advance if I wanted to).

I started calling music stores in Miami and worked my way north - I would have flown to Washington State or even to Japan to get a replacement even if it meant losing big money on the gig. Our reputation was at stake. Fortunately I found one in Melbourne Florida - somebody made a special order and then didn't buy it.

After that I collected spares of all my sound modules. A 10 space rack is too big to carry a spare on the gig, but at least I could go to the next gig.

Then a couple of years later, when XP was released with the ability to access larger hard disks, I started making mp3 files at 192kbps with CDex on the highest quality setting. That's when I bought 2 ThinkPads, one of which still bounces on the keyboard stand a few times every week (I do one-nighters). The other one finally went flaky - when I moved the screen on the hinge, horizontal lines flashed across the screen. It was about 10 years old, so it wasn't worth repairing, it still works at home though.

I also now have a flash drive with all my mp3 files on it, so that if I need to run to the store and get a new computer - I'd have ready access to all my files.

A gig is important, but my reputation is even more important. Bad news travels fast. I have never missed a gig, I've never been late for a gig, and I've never failed to finish the gig. Nobody is going to have a reason to tell other clubs or party people that we didn't do the gig and left the audience hanging. That kind of news can cost you a lot more than a second computer.

Insights and incites by Notes

Redundancy is KEY to anything live. Worst case, have the .MP3 version on your smartphone and bring a cable / adapter.

All your advice about running from MP3's is well stated and good. Wisdom borne no doubt from experience. Advice I will take.

However, I really do like running live from a laptop, and have been doing it for over 5 years.

My gigs are relatively low stress and informal, usually restaurant or small parties. The players are me (classical guitar) and usually one friend, a career professional guitarist. Mostly we play great american songbook standards where we've tweaked the changes to our liking. Arrangements are easy, one of us takes the head, then we switch off improvising choruses, then head-out. Our work load is also pretty casual, 3 or 4 gigs a month. With Real Tracks as our rhythm section, sounds great and we can control the loudness so people can talk while having dinner. Doesn't pay a great deal but we get lots of compliments and tips aren't too shabby. I've showed the rig to a friend (sax player) who now has pretty much the same kit and using is to play out.

We certainly could work from MP3's and charts, but it's sure easy and convenient to work from a small (bright) laptop. Easy to see where you are in a song (though admittedly I do sometimes wonder if I've become overly dependent on following the cursor). And as I said before, we've been doing this for quite a while. Laptops really have become pretty rugged, and operating systems far more stable over the last few years.

There is very little in life more rewarding than friends making good music together in comfortable settings. Thank you BIAB.

John

I have DEFINITELY become dependent on the cursor. I have to force myself to look away. I am trying to either memorize the tunes, or just bite the bullet and print them. It's an evil crutch.

Memorizing used to be easy for me when I was in bands with 100 or so tunes, but now that I have over 550, I just can't keep them all in my head.

I put charts up on the spare computer, and use them for reference. On the tunes we do often, all I need is a glance to jog my memory.

On the new tunes and tunes that we do rarely, I spend more time looking at the chart.

However, if you are reading the music, you will never memorize it. You have to take the chance (preferably at home) and try to play them without the music if you are going to memorize them - at least that's the way it works for me.

Insights and incites by Notes