I've been podcasting for over 20 months now, and have saved my files every time, and then backed them up within 24 hours.

Except last night, after recording 2 hours of audio with 4 people.

And now it's gone.

Remember to save your audio file (at least) as soon as you record them, and back them up quickly as well. If you forget just once, Murphy and his laws will snap up your audio and toss it into the void.

Oh man. Sorry to hear that. Wow.

That's awful! Thanks for the reminder.

What's the best way to backup audio files? Will a basic CD suffice or is there more to be done?

<sigh> You know what they say...

There are two kinds of computer users. Those who *have* lost data and those who are *going to* lose data.

Sorry to hear about the data dump.

The best way to back up your files (Says the guy who can't even remember to save) is to get them somewhere other than the computer they're on right now, so if a meteor comes done and hits your computer, you have the files somewhere else. For me, that means zipping them up and copying them to another computer, but if you want to burn them onto CD or use a Zip drive or a cassette tape, that's fine. Some people email them to their gmail account. Whatever works and gets the files somewhere else.

But first, you have to save them, otherwise there's nothing to back up :/

I'm very sorry for anyone putting so much energy into an interview and then losing it afterwards. The story reminds me of shooting a lot of pictures without a roll film in the camera, or having forgotten to get the cap from the lens. A very painful memory, I'm sure, many of us older folks share.

I've heard that podcasters who have lost their audio recordings have several ways to record their interviews simultaneously. Not only record on your computer, but also on a separate portable MP3 player with recording capabilities, as a backup during recording. Heck, you could use your camcorder or digital pocket camera as a backup medium if you're doing interviews with all the people in the same room. It might be bad audio, but bad audio is better than no audio at all. You can always recreate the audio in good quality, by narrating what has been said and add some snippets of the bad recording to give it some authenticity.

I heard Leo Laporte once say that he used the studio tapes of the radio station as a backup, because he had messed his own recording. So you see, even very experienced and famous podcasters lose their recordings now and then, and they seem to have at least one backup strategy to recover from such a loss.

I guess when a large enough planetoid hits the Earth and shatters it completely into oblivion, or if a gamma radiation burst sterilizes this sector of our Milky Way, making a backup during and after a recording is pretty futile, but in all other cases, it might come in handy.

It can't be said and written enough: always backup your data, and use a second recording device while recording interviews.

Sorry to hear about the loss. I once did an interview and realized afterward that I'd forgotten to press record. Another time, I ran my laptop off the battery and ended up with a horrible unusable recording.

Sorry for your loss.

My first interview for Missionary Talks was sabotaged because I ran out of disk space on my computer. Fortunately, I was knew it right away and we re-recorded the interview the next day. But it was not as fresh and spontaneous then.

My policy (though I don't always follow it) is to save the file before I even start working with it. For example, I open my word processor and save the file with a filename before I put any words on the paper. That way auto save might save my hide. Though I don't think Audacity has an auto save feature.

Again sorry for your loss. Thanks for sharing though, it will serve as a reminder to me to be more diligent.

The tales of woe are actually making me feel better in a sadistic sort of way, so thanks for that.

We will survive, and after the ritualistic beating I'm sure my cohosts will give me, I'm sure I'll remember to hit Ctrl-S next week.

It's always nice to know you're not the only one who's made mistakes. (But they're the only things that you can truly call your own....)

Ouch, so sorry to hear that. In over 170 One Minute How-To shows I have yet to have this happen, but know that if I make the slightest slip-up, it'll come back to haunt me in spades. The only good to come out of this is that because of the experience, it will probably never happen again.

Cheers -

george

(P.S. Pittsburgh was a gas, wish you had been there.)

This is one of the many reasons I record interviews and my voiceovers onto a digital voice recorder and THEN load them onto my computer. I'm utterly paranoid.

Agreed, that's what I do also with Eclectic Mix. However, for One Minute How-To I can only record myself on my digital recorder. I record the guest using Total Recorder, which has never let me down, but I'm not going to say that because it will jinx me. <g>

Cheers -

george

Are you talking about when you record using Skype? Are you running your mic through a mixer? If so, why can't you just run an audio cord out of your computer into your mixer?

No, I don't have a mixer. I record myself on my digital recorder and the guest coming in through Skype via Total Recorder. Putting the two together is a snap.

Cheers -

george

Ah ... no mixer ... then, I see why you have to do it the way you do

Man, have I been there before working on someones website design and 1/2 way had a major power outage lost all my work it was a bummer . sorry it happen to you bro.

You must back you stuff up. I learned this using ProTools : (