During a 9 hr. recording marathon, my PC shut itself off and rebooted itself 3 times. After the session, I was backing up the project to my fire wire drive when I heard a POP and down went the PC.
Upon removing the power supply I found black components on the pcb. A quick trip to a mom & pop computer store bagged me a power supply. No boot, nothing. My video card, a 30g OS drive, and an 80g music drive were toast. Installed the 20g that came with my HD24, an old video card, slipped in my ghost boot disk, and PRAYED. Boot, Ghost(2 months old), and I had a working PC on it's side with drives hanging out, on the control room floor. Now to check the extent of the damage.
The previous day's F/W backup of the project was there. OK, at the worst, I'll just have to repeat the 9hrs.
I opened the folder of the post session backup, and no it was not all there. One conga track from one song was missing. That's it! One freaking conga track!
I am a firm believer in the power of prayer and external drives!
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My computer was connected to one of these: http://www.tripplite
My computer was connected to one of these:
http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=209
Honestly, I think the internal power supply in the PC just went bad and it was nothing to do with a surge, power outage, etc. I know that they are precision devices delivering the correct, regulated voltages to all components inside the box, but like anything else, they can just fail.
Sorry for the assumption flatrockrecordin. Does sound like your
Sorry for the assumption flatrockrecordin. Does sound like your PS went south. Have you ever experienced the abrupt shutdowns b4?
And your situation is a wake-up call for me. I'm going to back up my Logic folder. Don't have a medium that's suitable for backing up 100GB of aiffs tho. Any suggestions? Tape?
I'd say a large F/W drive. It's external and doesn't use power f
I'd say a large F/W drive. It's external and doesn't use power from the PC power supply. USB might not either, but I don't know. However, an external tape or dvd drive might be better for removable storage. I do daily saves to the F/W drive until the project is complete and accepted by the client. Then I use winrar to split up the folder into CD sized chunks which I burn off and store.
flatrockrecordin, Did you have an UPS connected to the computer
flatrockrecordin,
Did you have an UPS connected to the computer? I have one and it was the smartest $150 I have ever spent.
Everyone who owns a UPS has a 'saved my ass' story. Mine is below. From, 'my other computer got fried' to 'i could've lost my term paper', etc. Sad to say there are a million loss stories like your own that could've been protected.
During Hurricane Isabel, last month, my neighborhood got hit with a really big power surge. One of my neighbors' computers got fried, but most were on surge protectors. And it wasn't even on! Immediately after that, there was a couple of brownouts before we totally lost power for about an hour.
All I could think was thank God I have an UPS. Surge protectors don't protect from brownouts.
Oh and UPSs come with warranties to protect connected equipment too, its almost like buying another insurance policy.