I had experienced my song diskette being corrupted and my KB could not load the songs. Worst still, my backup disk was also corrupted! I still could firgure out the reason of the disk failures and only remembered I had my handphone sitting on the backup disk for over an hour. Luckily I had a 2nd backup disk which saved the day!

I am interested to know how many copies of file backups do you all have? Those
contingency plans

I usually have at least two separate copies of my most important files (one on floppies and the other one on my hard disk); from time to time I burn also a CD with all these files and -to be even more on the safe side- I usually make two copies of each CD.

(Like they say, better safe than sorry...)

I have several MIDI file backups ranging from CD's and Zips locked in a firesafe to the copies on my desktops and laptops. But I also have contigencies for hardware synth failure too. I use a Yamaha 9000 Pro on stage which has it's own hard drive of my midi files that come straight off of my desktop. But I also have a laptop loaded with Yamaha's S-YXG50 virtual synth program that I use as backing when I play acoustic piano and as a contingency in case the 9000 Pro should ever suffer a failure and need repair (I can use the laptop and one of my Kurzweil keyboards that I normally leave in my studio). The desktop with the midi files also has the virtual synth program and acts as a backup to the laptop, so I have two file/player backup options to my 9000 Pro. One idea that I intend to follow through with is that I also have a Nomad Jukebox MP3 player which I use for break music - it wouldn't be that hard for me to make MP3 versions of all of my backing from the 9000 Pro so I'd have yet another portable backup player option... especially handy since the MP3 player goes with me everywhere anyway unlike the laptop.

That may be a little extreme for most players but there are many easier ways to have both file and player contingencies. Smal MP3 players with your backing tracks would be an easy and fairly inexpensive option. For a long time I kept a Roland SD-35 midi file player handy; which is essentially a Sound Canvas with a disk drive. Not very powerful but it'll sure get you through a solo gig (in fact I've got several soloists started with these). These can be found for cheap on eBay - here's one available today:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2528826090&category=3278

Back ups, you bet!!Ihave my working files[SMF, styles and Performances on 4 back ups[ZIP disks], also a library on floppies..I also maintain back ups on my Desktop, 2 seperate hard drives. Two backups are retained in two seperate removable hard drives for my laptop...And for safe measure, CD copies....Do I believe in back ups, You BET..

Backups ? Definitely. I once made the mistake of not backing up several pieces of work, only to have my hard drive crash and burn. I had a good bit backed up on CD but I had been lazy and hadn't backed it all up.. and I never recovered those pieces.

Today, Everything gets backed up to CD ( twice ). Anything of any importance gets backed up immediately. A copy of all master files is in a fire safe box, although I'm strongly considering a safe deposit box too, in case of fire I fear that the contents of my fire safe box could be compromised due to extreme heat.

As far as live play. I bring a minimum of two instruments, two mikes, and am looking for a second sound system. I bring 2 floppies each of everything. Both of my arrangers share some of the same styles, although one is a Korg ( PA80 ), the other a PSR2000. i am doing the opainstaking work of converting PA80 styles for the 2k, and I say painstaking because I take a good bit of time to adjust the eq / effects, levels, instruments, and OTS settings to try to make them good replications of the originals. I actually enjoy doing the conversions too. If I feel like bringig the Motif to a show, I have midifiles for a good bit of my repertoire, should the arranger that comes with it fail. Next project after the sound system is a laptop.

Backups ? You bet !!

AJ