OK. Everyone go read this.
Too busy? – ok, here’s the short summary. Band with loads of digital backing tracks etc, gets their van broken into. Loses everything. The key quote:
“…our show files lived on 3 laptops, and 4 separate external hard drives, all of which were stolen. […] All of our computers, and back up hard drives were taken, and no-one else on the planet has these files.”
If you’re reading this going ‘this could be me’, then wake up NOW.
For the price (£79.00) of one of those backup drives, do yourself a favour, and buy a ‘Pro’ subscription to Dropbox, or One Drive or something in the cloud, and drop a regular backup on there. Just somewhere that isn’t going on the road with you and you can access if you need to. It may save your gig. Or even your career.