Archiving in Smoke >

# Supplementing Archives with System Drive Backups

The recommended backup strategy for your Smoke workstation is to archive project media and setups to an archive that can be saved to a remote file server or storage device. Do this as often as necessary to protect your media from storage or system failure.

The archiving approach, however, does not protect the data contained on your workstation's system drive. The system drive should not contain any media data, but it does include important project management data. In the event of hardware failure without a system drive backup, you will need to recreate this project data for each archive you restore. This can be a time-consuming and frustrating process, and is a significant issue in large SAN environments, where large quantities of media files are referenced from a shared standard FS volume. In such environments, consider using the data backup method of your choice to save key system drive information. This will facilitate restoration of multiple project archives.

Even with a system drive backup, you will still need to reinstall your software and restore archived projects in the event of a system drive failure.

There are several methods and commercial tools available for backing up system drives. Choose the method and tool that is right for you. Autodesk does not recommend any particular method or tool, and only presents the directories of note that you should consider backing up. Depending on your requirements and available tools, you may decide to back up your full system drive or only the following critical files or directories.

File/directory | Purpose | Consequence of failure if system drive is not backed up
--- | --- | ---
/usr/discreet/clip | Contains all clip metadata. | Metadata will have to be recreated for each valid archive that is restored.
/usr/discreet/project | Contains full project structures, including settings such as names, resolutions, user information, and so on. | Project settings will have to be recreated for each valid archive that is restored.
/usr/discreet/sw/swdb | Contains the standard FS links database. | Media on a shared SAN volume will have to be re-imported.
/usr/discreet/sw | Contains all Stone® and Wire software and configuration files, including the preceding directory, swdb. | Storage and Wire settings will have to be reconfigured after installation.
/usr/discreet | Contains your product software, as well as all other directories described in this table. | See consequences for all previous items. Back up this directory if you want to be sure to restore all critical data, and do not mind including some superfluous files (such as old unused versions of the application.)

#### Topics in this section

- Browsing an Archive Offline
- Recovering a Corrupted Archive