Until you have had a hard drive failure or “accidentally” deleted your Pro Tools sessions where all your hard work is lost, tips like proper session backup seem boring and a waste of your time. If you haven’t had issue with lost recording then pay attention to this post because I don’t want you to ever experience that!
My hardest lesson learned was thinking that I actuallay was backing up my sessions properly. What I would typically do was record everything, and then when we were finished for the day I would simply close out of Pro Tools, find the session on my hard drive and physically drag a copy of the session folder to my backup drive. I figured “I know have two copies of the sessions. No problem” The problem arose when I actually lost some files and needed to access my backup only to find that despite having the audio saved to another drive, it was still looking for information from my old drive and the session was confused as to where each audio region was supposed to be in the timeline. This became a major headache very quickly.
What I’m going over real briefly today is the officially sanctioned procedure for file backup (and even prepration for session transfer to someone else) by Avid themselves. It’s super easy, so there is no reason NOT to do this:
1. Save Copy In
With the desired session still open in Pro Tools, simply head to the FILE menu and choose FILE – SAVE COPY IN.
This will open up a new dialog box giving you a ton of options and settings to choose from, which brings us to our second step…
2. Include All Audio Files
In this dialog box, most everything will be set the way you would want. Pro Tools by default will have the latest Pro Tools session type set, as well as the current audio file type, sample rate and bit depth of your current session (assuming you want to keep that the same for your copy). What isn’t selected by default however is the option to include all the actual audio you recorded. This is a no brainer, check that darn box now!
3. Name It and Save It
Finally you’ll be asked to name the copy of your session (labeled “Copy of …” by default) and give a location to be saved. This is obviously where you’ll want to select your separate backup hard drive as the final location. After click the OK button, Pro Tools will start copying everything over to the new session copy and you will be left with a neat and clean session copy with it’s own audio files.
That’s It!
The benefit to backing up your sessions in this fashion is that you get a completely unique and self contained session copy that isn’t “looking” to any other hard drive or disk allocation in order to function. You could burn and mail this, upload this to your FTP server, or simply re open it later if the original session is lost all without any hassle. Do this from now on and just know that you’re doing the right thing…especially if you are working with paying clients!
Comments
When I finish a project I always back everything up to DVD’s as well. Generally I go into each pro tools session and consolidate all of the files and then delete all of the unused takes, this free’s up a tonne of space for the backup. You can even do this half way thru a project by “saving a copy in” a backup folder and then doing the above. This way you have a hard copy incase something silly happens
Great idea Shane!
Its just nice to have a hard copy just in case. Plus when your finished its nice and tidy to give the clients, “here’s the backup, its kinda like the 2 inch tape for the project” and “here’s your masters” this way your hands are clean when they come asking for something 5 years later lol.
[...] Proper Session Backup [...]
I’m just curious about how I would follow a few of these tips simultaneously with my computer. Namely, I would like to start recording to my external hard drive and backing up my sessions elsewhere.
I run PT 9 with a firewire interface on a 2010 macbook pro. This computer has 1 firewire 800 port and 2 USB ports (it seems they are USB 1). My firewire port is occupied by my interface, USB port 1 is occupied by my iLok key (required to run PT 9), and USB port 2 would be occupied by my external hard drive. So the only other place I could really use for backup, in addition to the external hard drive, would be my internal hard drive, but would this slow my system down in the same way as recording directly to internal as your main drive?
Nathan. I have the same Macbook Pro. You can use a Firewire hard drive and daisy chain your hard drive(s) with your audio interface, that’s what I do. Your USB ports are 2.0. If you need more of them, buy a little cheap hub and run your iLok, keyboard, mouse, etc off of that hub, leaving you a dedicated USB port for additional gear.
I daisy chain three hard drives and my interface through my firewire port. I run PT on the internal drive, record to an audio (external firewire drive), and then back up to a separate external drive. Hope that helps!
Hey Graham,
I saw the icon for Dropbox on one of your videos. I personally have a MP that I run PT 9 and plugins off of one internal drive and my sessions on a 2nd internal drive with an external HD that is governed by my Apple Time Machine for onsite backup. My sessions folder is also being backed up by Dropbox to then be used on my mobile MBP. Guess my question is, it seems like all of my sessions are copying redundantly where I want them to be but I’m not certain that they aren’t somehow still linked to the original session source. I know I’m kind of answering my own question in regards by being able to open sessions remotely. I don’t do the Copy As function because I’ve been leaning on this but any thoughts or anything I’m maybe missing? Also, have you explored Gobbler yet? Ye or Ne?
Ps. Top-notch job on these tutorials bro…
[...] the last few minutes of your work. Isn’t that the worst?! I’ve already covered how to properly backup or archive a Pro Tools session when you’re finished, but one setting in Pro Tools that will literally [...]