Backup hard drives
One would think that 2 500 GB ext usb2.0 drives each with the same data would be quite secure as a backup. However, this is not the case at all. In fact, a few weeks ago my 2 drives both took a fall from the top of a minitower case to their untimely death. On both drives: bad heads, motors seized up and damaged platters = an expensive recovery service. As many of my albums and recordings from 1998 and on were stored on these drives, recovery was the only solution or those albums would be lost forever (at least the masters, some mp3 copies of some of the albums remained but with inferior quality). So, for a week I researched and got quotes on data recovery services. It is horribly expensive with an average recovery at about $1400.00-3500.00. A physically damaged drive requires a clean room to be recovered which is an expensive as well. Finally, I discovered low cost data recovery in CA and they could do it for $649.00 if the data was recoverable at all. So, I sent them both drives and I am glad I did as they said I was extremely lucky to have 2 drives with the same data. As a result, they were able to recover 220 GB of data, that’s was everything except ten files!!! I highly recommend them as they were first rate and low cost and did a great job, miraculous really.
SO, I got the drive data back on an Iomega terabyte drive I had purchased for this purpose (as I already had one and figured this would be a good backup as well). I copied the data on to my other terabyte drive. I also received the 2 500 GB drives back and as they are in warranty, I will send them in for replacement. The 1terrabyte Iomega drives cost about $200each, but hopefully these will last.
Conclusion, backup your stuff and not just on hard drives, but on to DVD’s!!! It's a pain in the ass, but it will be well worth while. I will never go through that again as my backup behavior has changed for the better. In fact, I should have known that I have music and data I created from 1990 which still exists on cd-r's and the hard drives have long since died or have been replaced. Having DVD’s with a 50 year shelf life (my neighbor informed me) make it a worthwhile backup medium. For a hard drive, its not if it will fail, but when will it fail.

Rackmount Case PC
As a result of my drives falling from my minitower and sick of having my pc on the floor, I ordered a Rackmount pc case. It was a 4 sp Rackmount case with 6 drive bays int, 3 5.25" ext bays and 1 3.5" and space for 2 power supplies and packed with fans. The cost of the case was about $50.00 which for new is quiet inexpensive. It's nice, with a locking door where the ext drive bays are. Though the fans aren’t that great, they pretty quiet ,but in an audio "home" studio you ant it to be as quiet as you can, so this will require replacing all the fans, the power supply and the cpu fan as well. But a silent fan is about $6-7 bucks. So not bad really.
One other flaw I discovered later was that while the case is 19" like most rackmount gear, the specs for the width of rackmount music gear and computer gear are comp0letely different. For instance, this case is 23" in depth which is huge really and is pretty standard for PC rackmount servers. However, most music gear is much smaller, with most racks dealing with up to maybe 19" or less cases. In fact, a lot of music rack ear is only about 14" in depth!!! So the choices are this:

1) Use existing case at 23" with about 5" hanging out the back of the rack case. This would not work if this was for portable use. However, in a studio the rack is not going to move form its current location and even if the case hangs out the back, so what?! Who cares? The front will still be accessible and what people will see.
2) On the market, I found a 4sp rackmount PC case with a depth of 18.5" instead of 23", much better, but more cost at $80 without power supply.
3) I also found a 2 sp rackmount PC case with an amazing 13.9" depth. Perfect, but all your pci cards will be on risers and your power supply will be proprietary and you only get 1 5.25" bay ext and 2 3.5" bays int, so 2 hard drives and that’s it. That kind of sucks for a studio pc where you need DVD drives, cd-r drives, etc.I need at least 3 .But for portability it’s really cool, oh did I mention the price? About $213 without power supply. So you pay for a small depth.
So for studio use, this rackmount pc will do ok. its more quiet than my minitower and looks cool and I can mount it in a rack where its out of the way, off the floor and accessible, sweet!!

Audio Desk Furniture
I seem to be consumed by this idea of a new studio desk/console for my studio. I think this stems from the fact that I keep my monitors on some speaker stands and it just doesn’t seem safe for the equipment. I mean the stands a re sturdy, but why tempt fate. Also, for the design I want which is quite classic, I found a company who makes something similar but for $2k. I am at the point where I know for a fact that this could be built for $200 maybe $300bucks. In fact, I am on the verge of doing this myself. I just add a countertop on some prebuilt rack cases and go form there. I mean the $2k desk, at least 1/2 that must be there profit. Wow, I should build some of these and sell them as there really isn’t anything out there that is similar at a reasonable price and for $200-300; you get a tiny desk which just won’t work for me. I have 3 vs. digital recorders I need access to as well as 2 adat recorders and add to that 2 laptops and a couple of control surfaces (with moving faders cool!!), my desk console just is too small and cramped.
I have struggled with this for years. There just isn’t much studio furniture out there, especially not locally which is a shame. So, I learned to make due with a spray painted microwave cart which holds a pc and some other rack gear and it works just fine. Anyway, as most would, I want a good looking studio environment but without paying obscene prices for furniture when it could be invested in gear and stuff that makes your recordings better, but I think if you build it yourself, you can do it cheaply and get what you want.

Alesis adat blackface and adat XT
These are coolest "obsolete" digital recorders out there. I recall when each was about $3500.00 and now I got 2 recently for less than $150.00!?! Amazing, one must consider that digital gear is never really obsolete. In fact, I suddenly have added 16 a/d and d/converters to my studio in that each adat has 8in's and 8outs and I can run that into cubase or sonar via adat optical light pipe. Very cool!!! And inexpensive way to get 16 a/d converters!! Luckily the emu 1202m has 8ch's of adat and the ext box has another 8 for a total of 16 ,plus its own inputs and out puts. So with the three vs's and the adats and the emu card, that's almsot 48 in/outs!! Wow!! Though the VS digitally can transfer about 2 ch. at one time, so that would be closer to about 24 in/out a/d.
The darn adat optical cable is expensive for a cable, at least $25.00 for three feet?! Locally. So mail-order I found closer to twelve feet for $1.99!! Well, its more if you put the adats in a rack not near your console then you will need a long adat optical cable. Well, this brings me to that desk I have wanted to build. It would be nice. Oh yeah, the adats can sync with my Roland recorders as well. Wow, I want more of these, the black face is limited to 48k 16 bit, but the 20 and xl have 20 bit, something like that.