Reliable backups are key for your podcast production process. They can help when you inevitably lose your audio or interviews. When tech issues, human error, or unpredictable circumstances happen, having backups can provide peace of mind for you and your workflow. Avoid the frustration of losing it all when creating your podcast by taking a page from my real-life podcasting disaster!

You’ll uncover:

  • How backups are a vital part of the podcasting process
  • Programs and processes to implement backups
  • How to add backups into your daily, weekly or monthly tasks for your podcast

Connect with Mary!

Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co.

Transcript with audio description:

[MUSIC IN // INTRO]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Welcome to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

MARY: Reveal and define your voice to speak your truth through the power of podcasting. And I’m your host, Mary Chan.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >>

MARY: Hello. Hello. Welcome back. This is episode number 56.

[MUSIC FADES]

MARY: Why reliable backups are vital for your podcast episode production process. 

[MUSIC IN]

MARY: And there is a reason why this episode exists. [LAUGHTER] Uh, it’s because I learned from, uh, taking the tough road, learning this firsthand. Okay, first of all, backups are vital. I know you’ve probably heard it a lot. Technology these days everyone’s got stuff on computers and phones and all of that. But you know why it’s more vital for a podcast, especially if you are working on the podcast yourself. So maybe you don’t have an editor you send things over to. So there’s usually like a copy that you’ve sent over, but you keep everything on your computer and you are working on the podcast yourself, or that you work ahead. So you already have interviews done. They’re saved to your computer before you can actually have time to edit them. Those are two key things because if you do lose your audio, then all those interviews that you’ve recorded, they’re gone. Or like me, if you already have the interview, it’s already edited, ready to go. But you still need to do, say, like the intro or the outro, and it was just sitting there all by itself, and then it’s gone.

[MUSIC OUT]

But that’s the thing about technology. In the 20 plus years that I’ve been doing audio editing, from my radio days to even starting my business now in 2018, everything’s been smooth. I’ve always got a backup process because backup processes are key. It’s instrumental in making sure work gets done and nothing is ever lost, and if it is, you can recover it. There may have been maybe one or two times in my career where I had to use a backup. They’re there for a reason, and it’s a lifesaver. 

And another funny thing, after I’ve told a couple of people this story, they also said to me, oh my gosh, this week I also had video issues. My video wasn’t working every time I went on a zoom call or I had mic issues, I just used my mic and I wanted to record something else and it stopped working or recording issues. Why did this recording sound so clippy and crackly and weird when I didn’t do anything different? So something must be in the air. 

Anyway, the episode that I had planned for today for you to listen to, episode 56, the original episode was an interview episode, not a solo one. It was fully edited. Uh, long time ago. I probably recorded this back in late October. It was fully edited. I just needed an intro and outro. What I usually do is prep my intro and outro leading up to when the episode would be published. So, like a week before, that way I can talk about things that are more relevant to what’s happening in the world right now. Things that are maybe happening in the podcasting space or what people have been talking to me about, about podcasting. So I put that into my intro or outros. And then this way I’m really fresh on my mind on what episode is being published, what am I going to do to promote it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So like that is my essential overarching workflow. 

So as I had prepped my entire intro and outro, I was going to go and record it, but I thought, oh, I should probably delete or move some of these other files around. I was also doing some file management stuff. And when I moved something over and I went to hit the delete button, for some reason, my computer deleted my entire documents folder. That folder housed all my audio work, my regular documents and files and photos. Everything gone, gone! I’m like “That’s not what I went to delete”. And it was a quick too. A big folder like that, you should have seen like the green bar or something. Say, oh, deleting lots of folders, deleting, deleting. But it was like gone in an instant. So something tricky happened there. 

But I went, okay, I can calm down. I have backups, right? I went to my external hard drive, but as I said earlier, I realized I haven’t been backing that up on a regular basis. But I noticed, hey, there’s one from January. I had this episode recorded back in October, so I should be fine, only to click on that folder to find all my subsequent folders. But nothing in the folders. The folders were empty. It was an incomplete transfer for some weird technical reason. And so I’m like, okay, well, I have other backups. The last backup before that was early October. So my interviews were gone because the interview that was supposed to be for today was done at the end of October. I was like, okay, no, no, no, I’m fine. I have recovery. I can use Windows files recovery. And I got most of my files. I didn’t get the session where I had it all edited down, but I still had the backups of the original files. 

So I thought, okay, I got those. Awesome. I went to click Play on them. They wouldn’t play. I tried all sorts of different things. Uh, different softwares to, uh, fix the corrupted files. Didn’t work. Paid for a different software to recover files and they recovered the exact same files as before, which meant they were also corrupted. Nothing different. I lost a day and a half due to trying to recover or re edit existing sessions. [SIGH] It’s been a week. [LAUGHTER] you know? And then on top of life happening, other personal things happening, and all of this work, and uh, the stress levels and losing my conversations, I loved, loved those conversations. I was so excited to share what was going to be the original episode 56. So excited. 

So you do what you got to do, right? You get on your email, you apologize profusely to the people, and hopefully they will reschedule with you to redo, or as I say, have a new conversation with you. And the great thing is, hopefully I get to, because then I get to spend more time with them. And they were amazing people to begin with. So then on the bright side, I was like, well, I do have an episode I’m supposed to publish coming up soon. Might as well talk about it and share my lovely little experience with you. [LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC IN] 

So from that, here’s what I learned. Because I edit these episodes myself, I didn’t have a cloud backup like I do with my client work. Normally with client work, they send me a copy of it. So it is on the cloud somewhere. So with this, I took a look at what I was doing, what my production process is, and what available options I have to improve for the next time. Because, you know, with technology, as I said, it is going to happen again sooner or later. Cloud backups, like I said, they’re great. Especially if you have the resources for it or if they’re already built into your recording platform of choice like Riverside Squadcast Zencaster. It’s on the cloud for you. Zoom does have a cloud recording option, but it depends on your account, so you might want to look into that. Um, I’ve also read in the past that Zoom doesn’t record separated tracks in the cloud. So you’ll have to figure out what is best for what you’re doing for your podcast. 

Personally, I use Clean Feed, and that is how I record my episodes. That becomes the backup. I also record locally on my own computer with my recording software. So then essentially, I have two versions of the recording and of course, they both got corrupted, right? But as I was compiling notes for recording this episode, I realized, wait a minute, I could just easily upload the Clean Feed recording, which is just one file, and put it onto my Google Drive, where the rest of the audio and docs and everything else my show notes is stored for each episode, right? Simple! I only thought of this as I was prepping the original episode. This is what I’m going to do moving forward, that’s for sure. 

[MUSIC FADES]

Another thing that I’m going to do is separate, or in the technical world they call it, partition my hard drive. And this is something I used to do at the radio station too. So I was like, I can’t believe I didn’t do this with my own work here. This way, if the Documents folder gets accidentally deleted, it’s not going to delete everything that’s in there because I would have separated out my drive and had a separate Documents folder. So that way I have my audio that I edit with my audio editing software. That’s on one partition, one part of the separate drive, and then my regular documents, PDFs, photos, files, things like that, go into my regular C drive. 

[MUSIC IN]

The next thing I’m going to do, of course, is, as I said earlier at the top of the episode, do a better job with my manual backups to my external hard drive. So what I used to do was at the end of every Friday, at the end of my week. I would manually copy my Documents folder onto my external hard drive. But what happened over time was by the end of the week, I was so tired, I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was do a backup or I’m working away, my kiddo comes home, I’m like, okay, I’m done work and forget. Oh yeah, I have to do a backup. Oh, I’ll do it next week. Oh, I’ll do it next week. Which never happens. [LAUGHTER] So I think what I’m going to do is move this task of doing the backups instead of Fridays to Mondays at the start of my week, so my week is fresh. I usually save this time anyway to look over messages, to get my week planned out. And so this is the perfect time to do this type of work. 

Another thing I’m going to do is I was quite shocked, actually, when I went to my Windows Recovery. It wasn’t turned on. And that’s why I was like, why isn’t it there? I should have that backup. This is my emergency backup. But what had happened was that when I originally bought this laptop, I had turned it on so that I could use Windows Recovery. And I gave it permission. But that’s all I did. Apparently. I didn’t see the toggle. There is a Toggle option to actually toggle it on. I just gave the computer permission, but I never turned it on. And I didn’t realize that. So, Windows Recovery was not working, but now it is turned on, so you know it’s turned on. I have this as an option as my emergency backup. So I’m wondering, there probably is a Mac equivalent to this. Maybe it’s a Toggle for automatically backing up to ICloud, if I remember, that’s how that works. Uh, let me know if you do know of a Mac equivalent to this Windows Recovery that I’m talking about. So it just automatically backs up in the background. For Windows Recovery, you can set it to like every hour, every few hours, every day, things like that. So there is an option for how often you want this recovery to take place. 

[MUSIC IN] 

So there you go. A week in the life of a podcaster, making mistakes. We all do it. It all happens to us one way or another. But it’s what you do with that lesson and turn it around for your next episode. You know, what are you going to do when you thought you had an episode ready to go and it’s not ready to go. It’s nice to have a backup or a plan to do something different. So your listeners are waiting for an episode and you got something for them, right? So there you go. I hope this episode has been helpful for you, but also at the same time, I hope you never actually have to go through what I went through. [LAUGHTER] 

Share some feedback with me. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had an episode that you thought was going to be published and then, oh, my gosh, we can’t publish it? What are you going to do next? Have you ever lost all your files? I’d love for you to commiserate with me. Share with me your feedback. You can go to my website, visiblevoicepodcast.com. Purple button says send voicemail. You can send a little voice note that way. Or also leave me an email visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com. 

Alright, then. So for the next episode, it’ll be an interview. I’m just not sure who yet. I have to move some things around. Or maybe I can get that interview that I really hoped it was going to happen back in time. Maybe, maybe not. Fingers crossed. It’ll be a surprise next week. But it’ll be an interview. It’ll be a good interview. [LAUGHTER] All right. Happy podcasting and speak with spirit.

[MUSIC ENDS // PAUSE A BEAT // OUTRO – SHOW CLOSE]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you shared it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to visiblevoicepodcast.com.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

[MUSIC ENDS]