data backup Archives - Haulix Daily

Artists and professionals alike need to back up their data. They should also have backups of their backs, and maybe even backups of those backups.

News broke this week that MySpace, the once-thriving social network, lost a dozen years worth of media due to an error that occurred during a server migration. Though specific numbers are not available, many believe over 50 million songs were lost due to this error, as well as countless photographs and videos.

The news of MySpace losing this data serves as a powerful reminder of the need to maintain personal backups of all important information. As hard as it may be to believe at this time, the likelihood that something similar happens on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is pretty high. There is also a good chance any blog post you’ve created will one day disappear. Hosting costs money, and even if you can afford your site there are countless ways your data could be lost.

If something is important, you need to take responsibility for preserving it.

Maybe you don’t care about remembering everything you did, but you should be concerned with your ability to prove your level of experience. That is why maintaining a personal archive of accomplishments and passion projects is so immensely important to your professional development. You have to be able to show your work, not to mention your talent, on a moment’s notice. Relying on someone or something else to track your activity is lazy and foolish. Others may benefit from your work, but at the end of the day your work is and always will be most valuable to you. Don’t take it for granted.

There is a market for this kind of thing. Over the last several years some companies have begun promoting tools and services designed to preserve digital content for future use/reference. These businesses may be tremendous and well-intentioned, but they are still an outsider to your personal journey. Use them if you like, but you should also keep offline archives as well. Save each story, song, video, photo, or accomplishment that matters to your own device, as well as an external storage device, just so that it exists regardless of what happens online. The internet is unpredictable, as is all technology, so you need to go to great lengths to ensure the continued existence of your creative output.

It has been said that nothing lasts forever, and the people behind MySpace just confirmed that to be true.

MySpace has confirmed the lost all media uploaded to its platform from 2003 to 2015. The data was deleted after the associated files became corrupted during a server migration that took place at some point in the last year two years. The company does not have backups of the content.

Questions over MySpace’s handling of data began to appear a year ago, in 2018, when songs posted to the social media site before 2015 stopped working. MySpace claimed at the time that they were aware of the issue and that it would be fixed, but no further information was provided to the public.

In a message recently sent to one concerned user, a representative for MySpace wrote:

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com.”

Another, similar, email was sent to a concerned user who shared an image of their exchange on Reddit:

MySpace may not be as popular as it was a decade ago, but until its recent data loss it maintained an archive of alternative and digital music that may now be lost forever. Countless artists working today got their start on the platform and many uploaded songs or demos that cannot be found anywhere else online. The team at Consequence of Sound is claiming 50 million tracks have been erased, but it is impossible to know for sure exactly how much music has been lost.

The likelihood of similar data losses on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms is higher than most choose to believe. The Internet Archive will host anything freely distributable, for free, forever, and they have mirrors of their servers in California, Egypt, and Amsterdam. They’re a mission-driven nonprofit supported by philanthropists, foundations, and small-money donations (I’m an annual donor).

But don’t rely on someone else to back up your data. If you have songs, photos, videos, or any other information online that you want to keep, then you need to save it yourself. Keep backups, and keep backups of backups. Use cloud servers and external storage devices. No method is guaranteed to work all the time, so make sure you have multiple ways of accessing the data that is most important to you.