What Is The Best Media To Save My Music Recordings To?

[Can You Help Me Please]

One discovery that is really a no brainer is online storage, but host also have hard drive crashes issues too, but even if I could hold them liable, I would rather have what I recorded then money that doesn't mean nothing for the work I put into my music. I was sort of thinking of getting a reel-to-reel considering these recording machines have come down in price quite a bit over the years. I would slowly buy tapes every time I made an album. Do you think this is feasible? I am a serious home dj artist and I have lost quite a few recordings that took hours to master, so I need the best affordable solution to keep all of my recording from becoming lost.

 

[USAFRet]

This is what backups are for. All media types die at some point.
A tested backup situation, that you either do manually all the time, or on some automated schedule.

Hard drives are your best bet.

 

[Can You Help Me Please]

I would rather go the analog way. The thing is that I DO understand that die at some point, but my point is that when I mentioned the reel-to-reel option I thought it was best option because I feel that it would be some time before I would have to transfer it to a new media storage medium again

 

[USAFRet]

I would rather go the analog way. The thing is that I DO understand that die at some point, but my point is that when I mentioned the reel-to-reel option I thought it was best option because I feel that it would be some time before I would have to transfer it to a new media storage medium again

Have you ever used a reel-to-reel?
One word - Lossy.

Yes, they were great back in the day. However, unless you buy high end studio equipment, and are meticulous...it isn't as good as a direct digital copy.

Another word - bleed through. (ok, two words)
If you record onto a tape, and put it on the shelf for a couple of years...bleed through. One layer will slightly imprint onto the next layer of tape. Yes, this happens.
You can hear a slight echo of the past or previous 20" of tape.
This can be prevented by FF or Rewind every once in a while. But it is a concern.

Another 2 words - head wear.
Yes, the playback and record heads do wear out, if you use it enough. I have a Pioneer RT-707 that is mostly useless, because the heads are toast.

Last word - Time
How long does it take to copy a 45 minute music selection from 1 HDD to another? 5 mins?
For a reel-to-reel? 45 mins.


What is your aversion to a 21st century backup plan?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Offsite backups are IMHO a major thing to think about. What happens if your house burns down, or flood, or quake?

Cloud storage providers handle stuff like failing drives - they have RAID, and enough version control and process controls that 'oops I deleted the wrong file' isn't a serious threat. I'm not sure to what degree they have offsite stuff, though. There's also questions about privacy.

Swapping an external HDD with a friend is IMHO a pretty good idea.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Why not just back your recordings up to multiple sources - CD's, DVD's, HDD's, cloud storage. It is unlikely all will fail at the same time. As to analogue tape, I do have a 2-track tape that was recorded 60 years ago by my parents that still plays (I have long ago transferred it over to digital and saved it in several places), and I still have 1 working Teak tape deck, but if the tape deck fails, I wouldn't have any way to play the tape.

I also have a rather expensive at the time ($2500+ in the 1990's) Tascam TSR8, 8 track 1/2 inch tape recorder and several reels of Ampex 1/2" tape which I can no longer record to because the capstan belt on the recorder got loose (it's like a big rubber band and you know what happens to rubber bands over time - they get flabby). I haven't been able to find a replacement for about a year now, and I think I messed up the record/playback heads when I took it apart to try to substitute a rubber band for the capstan belt, so absent finding someone who can still repair the tape deck (if there are still parts around), it is just a museum piece in my studio.