Backup

[glorybound]

Ok, nerds, I have two questions for you.

Do you save all project assets in the project folder or leave them in your assets folder and link?
Do you archive your backups with your project?

I know storage is cheap, but not on-line storage. I use i-Drive, and I do a lot of cleaning to stay under a threshold, so I don't have to pay an arm and a leg. I save everything in my project folder, so if i have to unarchive a project, I know everything is there, but again, everything is synced online.

I am just curies to know what others do.

[Joelaff]

Always copy assets into the project folder both for rendering and archiving.

Don’t want somebody to remove something in the future and have it no longer accessible. (Think of how things disappear from Netflix. )

[glorybound]

That is my school of thought. I just delete terabytes of data, folders I haven't been in for a decade. I deleted one folder that was almost a tarabyte,and from the early 90s.

[will_will]

I copy assets into project folder, one folder contains all the assets for the project .
for me , the assets folder just stores assets. XD

[AEBI_VINCENT]

I think it's worth the effort to make sure that all the assets used in the project are located in the project folder.
Sometimes I pull assets directly from our "assets server", then I remaster them for the current project and then replace the old one. That way the assets kind of stay up to date.
f.e. if I have this old eames chair model, I pull it into the scene and I see that the materials are outdated, I will make new materials and when I'm done, I will "save selected" and save the newly materialized chair model back into our assets server. Sometimes overwriting the old one.

[glorybound]

Okay, the trend is to keep all assets in the current project folder. I work alone, but my worry was always if my assets drive crashed or got a virus, I would have everything in the project folder wheh archived.

[glorybound]

What do you think about archiving and backing up backup files? Also, would you happen to archive your PSD files, which are usually large, and I don't need them after the job is done? Sometimes, a client pops back up and requests a color tweak, but once the project is done, that is rare.

[Joelaff]

We archive everything. Sometimes I will go in and delete some earlier renders. But usually it's not worth the time, and/or you delete something useful.

The fileserver is snapshotted every hour and backed up every two hours. We use a physical offsite server for further backup. Nothing cloud.

[glorybound]

I have two external drives, and one hesitates when I select it; it might be on its last leg. I purchase a My Cloud EX 2 Ultra, but it is only 4TB (upgradable), which is making me try to optimize things. I also use iDrive, 8TB, and I need more space there. The tiers on iDrive dramatically increase after 8TB, so I don't want to exceed it. Best Buy has a massive 12TB drive for the price I paid for the MyCloud, but accessing my working files from anywhere seemed like a good idea. I might get the 12 TB anyway and retire the probabilistic external drive before it bites the dust.

[Joelaff]

Those external drives are so cheap that you can (and should) have two copies of all your data on two of them. Ideally only one is ever connected at one time (in case of malware).