What is the best way to secure your back up of biab, if pg music was not around anymore.

Should we d/load all the files from the sales page and store them unzipped or..?

Well, it’s delivered on a hard drive. And whatever means you hourly/daily back up your PC or Mac should handle backing up the program and associated files you create. However I live in Apple World

As far as I know, activation (and you have three) writes a file to your hard drive but does not need to ‘phone home’ after that. As long as you keep your PG Music-supplied hard drive, DVDs or downloaded files, you should be fine.

Bud
I couldn't set back up for all the real tracks etc, I meant it all.

Think about it, like cakewalk sonar etc, you had a big crash, hard drive failure even back ups go wrong.

No website to d/load from, not causing panic just saying, and yes wondering if I should d/load all and save unzipped ?.

Matt

That's what I have just now, Just looking at the fact that we wouldn't have the web site to fall back on if the worst happens, and it usually does.

Sorry ,just wondering don't mean to be all doom and gloom.

Guess I'm just too cloistered in my Apple world. I do full backups up daily and if my mac hard drive completely crashed I could create a clone of it on a new mac or new hard drive with only a few clicks here and there. I have a terabyte HD and back up to a terabyte HD. I keep another clone in the safety deposit box and swap it out monthly. A lot of folks find the Apple world too restrictive but I like being taken care of

Bud

Wellll !!!

I'm off to apple, sorted.

No, just follow a good backup regimen.

I have the installation files for every application on all my computers on a 2TB USB hard drive - all the apps, all the sound libraries, all the utilities, all the O/S discs, etc. Then that USB drive is backed up to another USB drive.

I have on occasion had to completely re-install everything (and it takes about a week because there is so much content to install, authorize, unzip, etc). But with that USB drive, I don't have to shuffle CD's or DVD's or downloads. I keep it current with any application updates, and I've got it all tracked in a spreadsheet that shows every the application organized by purpose on each tab, the current version, status of updates between my three computers, installation notes, authorization/registration codes, vendor site and forum login information, etc.

I also take a monthly image of my three computers (I just run it when I go to bed at night and it's done when I wake up in the morning), so recovering from a hard drive failure only takes as long as getting a new hard drive and then however long it takes to get the data off the USB image backup onto the computer. The O/S partition usually takes about 2 hours, but restoring my audio libraries (1.5TB worth) takes much longer just because of the time it takes to copy that much data.

But hey, that's just me.

John

That is what I was thinking, then I thought is that over the top.

Good to hear its not, hard drives will need to be bought.

Cheaper than a mac.

BTW, I also use a virtual CD/DVD disc mounter. For the apps that came on DVD, I converted them to ISO image files, which I save on my USB hard drive. I can then right click on the ISO file, assign a drive letter, and it's just like having the CD/DVD mounted, but operates a whole lot faster.

Why assign a drive letter?
Most ISOs I have dealt with run fine from wherever they are stored.
Just curious; I'm not an IT guy.

I only get put on IT duty when they are short handed or have a unique code/database or integration issue.
They build 'em, I beat on 'em.

Was all going well till I read the above two posts..?.. virtual CD/DVD disc mounter.

Because some of my older software doesn't repond to UNC reference.

I also save my audio CD's to Nero's NRG format, which I can then mount as a virtual CD and play in my audio player as if it were a physical CD. And while the file could potentially get corrupt, it doesn't get scratched.

I use the free one from DVDFab, as I found some of the others balked when I went to Windows 10 (although they may have caught up). I used to use MagicISO for a long time, but it didn't like Windows 10 when it came out. The one from DVDFab seems to be based on MagicISO (similar interface), however, but works great on both my Win7 and Win10 machines.

Reinstalling windows is a real pain. I do make regular backups with acronis 2010, I also have bought acronis 2018 but I hate the GUI, so usually if something goes wrong I just do a recovery with acronis 2010.

(Macrium Reflect free version is a fine program as well, might switch to it in near future)

That was until a few weeks ago, as I had windows 10 32 bit and stuff like Second Life was constantly crashing in busy sims, so decided to put on windows 10 64 bit, which solved the crashing problems.

But as John said a pain to put everything back on and aurhorize.

Probably talking about 40-50 hours in all. About 95gb and still counting as I add stuff.

Think I am almost there though.

I was just thinking though about activation. Wouldn't it be great if PG music gave all registered users, a backup offline activation file for the last years version that they bought, not current until they upgrade again for next year.

That way should anything happen (and I'm sure Pg music aren't going anywhere) the faithful followers of the program would be sucure in knowledge that the offline activation file would always activate biab.

It is my understanding that if you back up with disk imaging software and do a complete restore, everything including the OS is restored. Computer IT folks, please correct this if I'm wrong.

I use Acronis, and I have a "toaster" hard drive docking station.

It hooks to the computer via a USB port, and you can insert and remove either desktop or laptop SATA hard drives in there.

This is what the toaster drive looks like loaded with a desktop and a laptop HD.



You can have scores of hard drives with different projects on them, store them in a safe place, and pop them in the toaster when you need them.

I do a daily backup with Acronis. It's a disk image with a few incremental additions. It rotates between a few of these so I always have the last half dozen or more backups available.

Then once a month I put another drive in and do a disk image. I have almost a years worth of images on that disk. This is cheap insurance. If I get a nasty virus, or ransomware, I can go back to an uninfected state.

I also backup data from my documents and other important folders using Microsoft/Windows' SyncToy software. I have it set up so that it looks at the designated folders on my computers HD, compares them with the identical folders on the toaster HD, and any changes made on the computer, get changed on the toaster. I do this every day too. I like it better than a backup because the files are uncompressed, and if I screw up something on the computer, say a song file I made changes to, I can just drag and drop from the toaster HD to the computer HD and it's fixed in a couple of seconds.

There is no need to go to Apple to make good backups. In fact, I'd say there are probably more good backup options for Windows than for Mac, simply because there are 20 times more Windows users in the world.

The only good reason to go Mac is if you like the Mac OS better or you depend on software that runs better on the Mac.

Your data is more important than your computer. Back up every day.

There are only two kinds of computer users, those who have had a hard disk crash, and those who haven't had a hard disk crash - YET.

Insights and incites by Notes

Musiclover I was just thinking though about activation. Wouldn't it be great if PG music gave all registered users, a backup offline activation file for the last years version that they bought, not current until they upgrade again for next year.

That way should anything happen (and I'm sure Pg music aren't going anywhere) the faithful followers of the program would be sucure in knowledge that the offline activation file would always activate biab.


That makes me feel safer.

Notes that is excellent googling the toaster right away.

Toasters are cool.

I *think* if your ticket file (key) from PGMusic is good it validates, and that's stored locally.

The possible issue I see is if you wanted to move the program to another computer after PGMusic was gone.
Then the available number of installs may cause an issue when the program checks for an available license.
In other words, I *think* a current 'good' install would continue to run, but a new install or new machine may cause an issue.

/By then, Pipeline may have a patch. <grin>/

.. of course everything I said could be wrong, but that's how I think it works currently ..

RB keeps a history of the tickets but BiaB seems to keep only the latest ticket (or maybe the re-organization of files in the recent version affects my perception of this)