Right now I’m working on A backup plan for my recordings.I read previous posts and the downfalls of cloud storage and wondered if anything has changed?
I understand changing to wav works but yhis would take a long time with the amount of recordins I have.Is there a compatible storage or are we still at the
same disadvantage we were a while back?
Cloud storage itself is little different to any other type of storage - it is mostly very reliable. The big problem for storing Audacity projects in a cloud is: can you guarantee error free upload and download back, for possibly tens of thousands of small files? Chances are, that you can’t.
If you really need to store projects in a cloud, and assuming that your projects are important enough that you want some assurance that they are not damaged on the round trip:
- Zip the entire project
- Calculate the SHA256 checksum of the ZIP file and save in a text file.
- Upload the ZIP file and the text file.
- If available, calculate the SHA256 of the ZIP file on the server. If not available, download the file and calculate the SHA256.
- Compare the SHA256 from step 4 with the SHA256 from step 2.
For download:
- Download the Zip file and the text file
- Calculate the SHA256
- Compare the calculates SHA256 with the value in the text file.
Some storage methods, such as Torrents, can simplify this process by doing the checksums automatically.
Note also that reliable cloud storage is quite expensive. The cost for 1 month is about the same as buying a USB hard drive of similar or higher capacity.
Well,I WAS looking at 10 / month,which I thought wasn’t bad until I started having problems. I have no idea what SHA256 is. Ha ha…you pretty much lost me
around the 2nd sentence of your reply.
SHA256 is a kind of “checksum”. It is a “magic number” that uniquely identifies a file (or text).
There are other types of “checksum”, such as MD5 (and others), but SHA256 is generally the preferred one as it is extremely reliable.
How it works:
A special mathematical algorithm is applied to a file, and produces one unique (quite long) number.
If the file contents are modified in any way, it will have a completely different SHA256 number. Thus the SHA256 can be used to uniquely identify a file, and validate that it has not been modified or corrupted.
SHA256 numbers are frequently used to validate large downloaded files. For example, the SHA256 numbers for the Audacity downloads are published here: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/online-safety-when-downloading/#validate
I am surprised you got damage in a paid Cloud Storage Service, no matter what it costs. You should investigate that divorced from the music storage. Maybe the storage is perfect but your transmission up and/or down is messed up.
That’s where encrypting the work comes in handy (ZIP). Less likely to be damaged from transmission problems.
My concern is people trying to use an iCloud service during live recording. Chances of that working reliably is really close to zero.
Koz
I wouldn’t trust “the cloud” as my only back-up. It does have the advantage of being offsite and very convenient (unless you only have one computer and it crashes so badly that you can’t get on the Net). The disadvantage is that someone else is in control, and “good luck” if they suddenly disappear or if something goes wrong.
I understand changing to wav works but yhis would take a long time with the amount of recordins I have.
Changing from what to WAV? I wouldn’t recommend converting MP3’s or other lossy files to WAV because if you re-compress them that’s another generation of lossy compression. FLAC is also lossless and it’s almost half the size of WAV. Audacity project files are 32-bit so they are bigger than “normal” WAV files. (And with lots & lots of little files, Audacity Projects are more prone to damage/corruption).
Note that a checksum or hash doesn’t help to recover corrupted data. It’s just a way of knowing if your data is corrupt or not.