The Bass Geek

This story pains me on so many levels. First, I can’t believe a hard drive from a musician is worthy of Homeland Security scrutiny. Since these drives are usually used by professionals only to store musical data and not normal system processes, it seems extremely unlikely that there’s anything incriminating on there (the name “Field Manual” aside).

It further saddens me that Walla has to go back to the original tapes to recreate the mix and master of the album. It’s so easy to back up and copy a data drive, and having to send one through a potentially ham-handed delivery service (over the border, no less) seems like a great time to create a backup drive.

So now I’ve joined the choir of those begging you to back up your data by any means necessary. It’s a big choir, and we have more than our share of disgruntled looks at problem users and slow shakes of the head when faced with a crashed drive that’s taken every bit recorded to its gleaming, spinning platter with it. I’ll promise not to be too loud or nagging; just get an external or internal drive and do it, especially if it means you’re going to redo a lot of work in case the data dies. And remember that ALL HARD DRIVES WILL DIE - it’s just a question of when. Here’s what you should have, in my experience:

• Backup of all data on your computer on an external hard drive
• Especially important files on optical media (DVD or CD)
• Be sure you copy your profile (under Documents and Settings in Windows, under username in Mac) information
• Include all of your devices in this backup routine, including PDAs, phones, and personal media players
• Some musical recording programs (like Garageband) store their files in one big package, while others (like Sonar) use a separate folder for audio clips that are arranged by the file’s attributes. Make sure you collect EVERYTHING necessary for your recording.

Lifehacker has some good and user-friendly tips for this.

Okay, sorry for the PSA. More bass wankery to follow.