15

Archiving and backup

15.1 Selection for archiving

Archiving often involves difficult decisions. If you keep everything, then you soon will be buried in old recordings. To be any use, they need to be catalogued; this is a lot of work.

Yet, so often, the interview that is thrown away is the one that turns out to have commercial value because of later fame or notoriety acquired by the person interviewed.

15.2 Compact disc

The ease with which computers can burn CDs has simplified the matter. A CD blank can contain about 80 minutes of audio in standard CD audio format. The discs themselves take up relatively little space, especially if kept in folders rather than conventional ‘jewel cases’. Plastic sleeves punched for insertion into standard lever arch folders allow the discs to be kept with any paper documentation.

Keeping your material as CD audio means that it is easily accessed using ordinary CD players. The audio can be reloaded into the computer faster than real time (x12 or more). However, editing information is lost and there can be a small loss of quality for each generation of copying due to the compromise nature of CD audio recording, which was never designed as a data storage format.

The Track At Once option of much CD burning software has the advantage that it allows you to burn multisession CDs. This could be useful for archiving, as you can add a track and remove the CD. On another day you replace the CD and add another track. While you are doing this the CD will be readable on your computer but NOT on an ordinary CD player. When you have finished adding tracks the CD is ‘closed’, or ‘fixed’; no more tracks can be added but the disc now becomes readable on an ordinary CD player. However, adding a track to a multisession CD can fail and you are likely then to lose the entire contents of the CD.

A better strategy for archiving is to allocate hard disk space for your archive material and then burn the CD in one go. Make two copies for real security. Ideally, archived material should be kept as computer files in CD-ROM form as this is error free.

15.3 CD-ROM

CD-ROM is designed as a data storage format at the expense of a little storage capacity; a little over 700 Mbytes of data for an 80-minute CDR blank. For most medium-length items, this is enough to contain all the material used in the editing session, including the edit decision lists (session files in Audition speak). This means that you can access the complete editor information and can ‘unpick’ edits or access the original uncut material. The data CD can also contain word processor and text files and even pictures associated with the item. This may include transcripts if they were prepared for editorial, copyright or World Wide Web use.

On the other hand, the convenience of having a CD audio version is very great, so a good compromise is to burn one of each. The audio CD becomes your every day ‘library’ copy. You can take it home, or to someone's office, and listen to it on any CD player. The CD-ROM is kept on the shelf and used only to transfer material to be reused. If the CD audio version becomes damaged then a new one can be made from the data files on the CD-ROM version. In extremis, a new data CD-ROM of the audio can also be made from the audio version but this will, of course, have none of the extra non-audio information that was on the original CD-ROM.

However, there is a spectre that has already loomed over the horizon; the life of CDRs. I have already had experience of well-stored CDRs burned 6 years ago sprouting data errors. This gives the CD audio disc an additional advantage; they are still playable with errors. CD-ROMs give file errors and refuse to give up their data.

15.4 Digital Audio Tape

Digital Audio Tape (DAT) cassettes can be used for archiving. Audio cassettes have 2 hours of capacity at 44.1 or 48 kHz. They have twice that at their half speed setting. This records at 32 kHz sampling rate. Using DATs manufactured for computer backup, you can get 4 hours or more onto a single cassette at full quality (8 hours or more at long-play, or LP, speed). However, the tape is thinner than audio DAT machines like and actually using them for computer backup is a much better option.

DAT can be useful as a way of archiving 48 kHz masters in a way that can be played as audio on conventional machines. DAT has a number of disadvantages:

•  The tape is very fragile and is prone to humidity problems. When a DAT gets mangled in a machine you have lost everything. While rescuing it is technically possible, this is a very expensive and time-consuming activity with no guarantee of success.

•  While it may sound trivial, a substantial disadvantage is the small size of the cassette. There is little room to write an informative label on them and they have also been known to disappear down the backs of chairs! The CD with jewel case or folder has a definite advantage here.

15.5 Analog

It is possible to archive material onto analog media such as compact cassette or reel-to-reel. This has a number of disadvantages and loses all the advantages of digital. It may give a shortterm compatibility with an existing system. Sooner or later, the existing system will have to be transferred to digital; it makes sense to do it sooner rather than later. There is a problem. While this is good for 5 years, there is no digital medium that is known (rather than claimed) to have a life measured in decades. Analog is a proven medium. At present, the pressed CD looks as though it has a good life but this far too expensive for routine archiving.

15.6 Computer backup

Just as all your word processor files and web transcripts can be transferred to the same CD-ROM as your audio, so this can be done using whatever computer backup system you have – you do have a computer backup system don't you?

All computers crash. All computer systems lose data. No one believes in backups until the day they lose a day's, a week's, a month's, a year's work. Companies have gone bankrupt because of poor, or no, backup strategy.

A comprehensive backup strategy will also take into account the possibility of theft and fire. Programs are (usually) replaceable. Data files represent investment of time and money. They cannot be replaced unless you have a backup.

Even if you do have a backup, do you know how to restore your files? A cynic would say that the world is full of good backup systems which are rubbish at restoring. Beware, while it is easy to protect against the theft of information by password protection and encryption, this protection is lost if the password is written on a Post-it® note stuck to the side of the monitor. Equally, if the computer is lost in a fire then so will the Post-it^® note! You must have a safe place to keep the password.

Choosing a password

Passwords should be easy for you to remember but difficult for others to work out. If you must write a password down then leave it in a secure place. Avoid the obvious; ’secret’ is one of the first things that a malicious hacker will try. They will also try the names of your spouse and any children.

For the best protection, you should use at least six characters and avoid dictionary words. For extra safety include non-alphanumeric characters such as ‘&$*@%’.

With some programs the password may be case sensitive so that ‘rad$38’ is treated as a different password to ‘Rad$38’ (a capital ‘R’ is used in the second but not the first). Here, the Caps Lock key being on can cause initial panic when the password you are so confident about is not accepted!

If you are an employee, then your company should have an admin. system where your password(s) can be kept securely against the day when you meet your demise in a car accident (or, with long-term data, they may need to recover the data even if you left the company 2 years prior to the disaster).

Storage systems

There are a plethora of hardware data storage systems, some based on tape cartridges and some based on disc cartridges. Because of the possibility of theft of the computer or fire, the backup must be on some form of removable medium. Tape cartridge systems have the disadvantage of a relatively short cartridge life. The tape wears. Some recommend cartridges being replaced after anything from 20 to 100 uses (this includes DAT).

With the dramatic fall in price of hard disks it is worth considering using standard high capacity hard disk drives mounted in removable caddies for your backup. An alternative, for home use, can be relatively cheap devices that allow you to connect Universal Serial Bus (USB) disc drives to your Wi-Fi network. These can then be in a different room and out-of-sight and accessible to your laptop and computers on the network.

Your backup regime should rotate round at least three removable media – the so-called grandfather, father, son strategy. Again, because of fire, you should store them away from your computer, in another room or even another building, especially with mature commercially valuable data. One way of achieving this is to backup, via a network connection, to a remote server. This can use a local area network or, if you have fast enough access, the Internet. For the amount of data involved in audio files you will need, at least, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) speeds and, even so, this will involve overnight backup runs. There are firms that provide off-site storage on their own computers. Talk to your system administrator about preferred ways of off-site backup.

Despite all this, for many purposes, taking a backup home with you overnight can be an effective way of meeting reasonable backup safety criteria. However, beware falling foul of the Data Protection Act.

A related problem is how to move material from one place to another. Sending a CD or a flash card in the post may be adequate. An audio file can be ‘emailed’ from computer-to-computer. Some radio stations use their administrative computer network to send audio data, often at less than real time, as and when there is spare capacity.