Backups Backups Backups!!!

[JimOttley]

well you've probably not noticed, i've not been on here for a few days

nope i haven't got a life yet or something better to do, like feed the dog


xp on my pc got really , first time in nearly 2 yrs


when i loggoed in, it logged straight out , tired many things, created a dummy wgaupdater, scanned it for viruses, safe mode, nothing would work

so i had to in the end replace the s/w hive with an older one

could login, most stuff appeared to work ok, messenger and azuerus , but firefox or IE wsouldn't, tired loads of fixes etc, service packs, etc. could not get it to work.

so , wiped all of windows off it using mini windows xp, left me data on and reinstalled xp, just finished putting virus scanner/firewall etc back on

i've got 70gb extra free now , 70gb worth of kids games which have been installed over 2yrs are gone

works great now :xxgrinning--00xx3

lost nothing but the time it took to re-install xp and the utils.

my misses had more than 6gb of photos on it

Glad you got it back Joe, I hate the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I've had a drive failure or corrupted OS.

I've been lucky, I've never really lost anything I have had several major PC failures over the years though and it's the time it eats up trying to get a working system cobbled back together that is the real hassle.

Even setting up a new laptop (my work got me a new one a couple of weeks back) takes me about 6 or 7 hours to get to the point where I have a working Development system.

Just in the process of moving about half a terabyte of data around to make room to consolidate and to backup my photo libraries which come to around 300GB at the moment, trying to avoid having to buy another disk just now.


Jim

[joebloggs]

Glad you got it back Joe, I hate the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I've had a drive failure or corrupted OS.

I've been lucky, I've never really lost anything I have had several major PC failures over the years though and it's the time it eats up trying to get a working system cobbled back together that is the real hassle.

Even setting up a new laptop (my work got me a new one a couple of weeks back) takes me about 6 or 7 hours to get to the point where I have a working Development system.

Just in the process of moving about half a terabyte of data around to make room to consolidate and to backup my photo libraries which come to around 300GB at the moment, trying to avoid having to buy another disk just now.


Jim

oh i've burn't all the photos and cam recordings onto dvds for last few years, thou i'm thinking of getting about a 500gb hdd to copy them all onto, as i've dug out some old data cds from maybe 7yrs ago, the cd coating on the top have faded a bit,even thou they been in a box in the dark , and most of my pc's couldn't read them any more, they are also fairly brittle, 75yr life span
so don't count on being able to read your cds/dvd's in a few years

the only thing i lost were a few docs i didnt really need, i deleted them thinking i had backed them up

[JimOttley]

oh i've burn't all the photos and cam recordings onto dvds for last few years, thou i'm thinking of getting about a 500gb hdd to copy them all onto, as i've dug out some old data cds from maybe 7yrs ago, the cd coating on the top have faded a bit,even thou they been in a box in the dark , and most of my pc's couldn't read them any more, they are also fairly brittle, 75yr life span
so don't count on being able to read your cds/dvd's in a few years

the only thing i lost were a few docs i didnt really need, i deleted them thinking i had backed them up

Yeah agreed writeable CD/DVD media is not a long term backup solution, I've had this discussion elsewhere as well. Sadly hard drives have limited life too, the only safe backup method is to keep your data on the move and to have it in multiple locations.

Photos and Video are a specific problem though because the sheer amount of data can be so large. If you only have a few Gig's worth of pictures then online storage can be a good idea but always keep a local backup as well.

Compact Flash IS a long term storage medium for photos (100 year plus, better than Kodachrome ) if it is protected from heat, magnetism and radiation.

For photos I try to treat Compact flash as film i.e. once I've used a flash card I buy another one, they are so cheap these days that the per image cost is lower than it was in film/processing days.

Treat your flash memory as your negatives or slides and you will not go wrong you still need hard disk though, because you should always have a copy.

Reasons for Flash drives failing are usually logical rather than physical electrical problems and you can always recover something when it's a logical error. The other reason for failure is excessive use where individual memory addresses on the card get re-written many thousands of times so write once read many is a good approach for them

Ana did a full wash cycle on a 2GB lexar card about 3 years ago and it still works, I don't trust it but it does still work

No luck on the lost documents, I really hate losing things like that even if the content is not so important.



Jim

[somebody]

oh i've burn't all the photos and cam recordings onto dvds for last few years, thou i'm thinking of getting about a 500gb hdd to copy them all onto, as i've dug out some old data cds from maybe 7yrs ago, the cd coating on the top have faded a bit,even thou they been in a box in the dark , and most of my pc's couldn't read them any more, they are also fairly brittle, 75yr life span
so don't count on being able to read your cds/dvd's in a few years

the only thing i lost were a few docs i didnt really need, i deleted them thinking i had backed them up

Glad you sorted it as you say sometimes a blessing as you reduce the clutter. I have so many files i keep just in case..

Im sure you could get some well made and cared for disks to 75 years in a workable state. Problem would thne be finding a device to read them.

As mentioned before any one got a bbc b laser disk to read the doomsday disks made back in the 80's


If you went back 75 years the various media formats that have been and gone would be huge.

Dat, was it philips digital casste, mini disk, analogue cassette, 8 track, wax cylinder, sinclair microdrive, comdore ealy device disk drives. very laser disks, betamax, VHS, s vhs, zip drives, floppy disk all formats including ones launched only ten years ago like the 120mb drive . Could back up to a cloud I can think of ones which offer 100gb's per person. but companies will come and go over 75 years. Most of these formats the average household would have problems laying their hands on im guessing. Even old HDD formats as we move forward will be complicated for the person in the street to read possibly as OS's develop and change even if they use ibm pc compatiables or apples pass and present.

Best method for many things seems to be a hard copy if photos, diagrams or written word. Books or photos albums might be the best bet.

[JimOttley]

Dat, was it philips digital casste, mini disk, analogue cassette, 8 track, wax cylinder, sinclair microdrive, comdore ealy device disk drives. very laser disks, betamax, VHS, s vhs, zip drives, floppy disk all formats including ones launched only ten years ago like the 120mb drive . Could back up to a cloud I can think of ones which offer 100gb's per person. but companies will come and go over 75 years. Most of these formats the average household would have problems laying their hands on im guessing. Even old HDD formats as we move forward will be complicated for the person in the street to read possibly as OS's develop and change even if they use ibm pc compatiables or apples pass and present.

Best method for many things seems to be a hard copy if photos, diagrams or written word. Books or photos albums might be the best bet.

Still have a ZIP drive and a 5 1/4" floppy several different tape formats I doubt I will ever plug one in again at least not before I'm 65

Cloud backup tried Humyo 100GB and hated it, the non web sync software was desperately poor, I have Diino 100GB just now and its Java based uploader is pretty good.

Problem with cloud backup just now is bandwidth, it took me a couple of weeks to even use 30GB.

Diino have a free unlimited backup policy but I've never had a single backup complete without error I'm only trying to backup about 8 GB but that is a two or three day operation. Even if you have fairly good upstream bandwidth it's just not enough to be usable.

As a photographer I still have all my negatives and slides going back 35 years indeed I have my dads negatives and slides gong back a further 30 years That is effectively hard copy and is why I was making the argument for Compact Flash as hard copy, it's just much more robust than any other form of storage I can think of.

Even B&W or colour negatives are only good for 25 years if processed well and a lot are not processed all that well, but at least they only degrade over time you can still print something from them 50 years later.

In modern digital photography RAW formats are digital negatives and I would really hate to lose mine. Post Processing is the same as going into the darkroom in the old days you can always go back and try again to get the best output possible.

I'm a bit anal when it comes to the subject of backing up my pictures as I guess you can tell

I do share Joe's concerns about online file storage and certainly I have far too many photos to ever consider it as the only option, I use Flickr for the majority of my best shots but Flick will not accept RAW format and over time it compresses your older jpeg images without telling you, I've got comparisons between original uploads and what I am now able to download and I have proved to myself that they are compressing older stuff to save space :(

As you say companies can come and go, can you imagine if one of these storage companies went bust but gave sufficient notice for people to download all their stuff their servers would melt


Jim