Computers + Stupidity = Catastrophe

[MylesBAstor]

We all hear about the importance of periodically backing up your hard drive. Sure a few of us even learned the hard way.

Well I learned the hard way with my USB stick. I was writing the Magico S5 review at home and in my spare moments at work and that USB sure seemed a great way of carrying the file back and forth. That is, if you back up your file on your hard drive and stupidly I didn't.

So Thursday I have an hour break at work and decide to put the finishing touches on the article. Insert the USB stick into my work computer and for some reason can't find my file. Remove the stick, reinsert and disaster strikes. That dreaded "format your stick" error message appears on the screen. Try and couple of times in a couple of different computers but no dice. By this point I am cursing but there's nothing I can do until later. Finish work at 1 PM and take the USB stick to my computer tech. He looks at the stick and says it will cost you $300 to recover the files. Hell no. Try a couple of software packages and no luck in retrieving the information off the stick. Luckily I had a hard copy--albeit it a couple of generations removed from where I was--to go back to. Better than starting from scratch though. So spent an hour or two retyping the 3000 word piece today and then have been re-editing again. Sadly though, there were other partially written reviews on that stick too without any hard copy that are now history.

Moral of story: backup everything.

[Guest]

I send generations of my work-in-progress as attachments to a one of my yahoo email boxes. And make backups locally, of course.

[MylesBAstor]

I send generations of my work-in-progress as attachments to a one of my yahoo email boxes. And make backups locally, of course.

Another great suggestion that I will now do too.

[Steve Lefkowicz]

I keep all my PF files in a Dropbox account. automatically saves everything to the HD of every PC I have linked to it, and saves it in my Dropbox account. Everything is backed up and available from any computer where I can log in to Dropbox. 2.5 GB are free. My wife has a pro account (1 TB for $99 year).

[MylesBAstor]

Thanks, use Dropbox but never thought of that.

[Garth]

It can get worse we have 7 computers at work we back up to disks end of each week with daily back ups to hard drives . We went thru a period of break ins where the computers were all stolen. They broke in thru a window and exited out the front door as the door self closes it caught the mice trailing behind they were lined up with their tails snapped off. Takes a day to buy new computers then the back ups then input several days work plus the work from the day you lost setting up.

New glass that you can not break with a hammer and they tried they hit it 20 or 30 times made a hole about the size of a hammer head in the first layer nevr broke the second pain. Roll down security doors for the main display windows.

Security alarm was of no use it worked but police time is so slow they are long gone. I have never had a camera system that maybe next or move next to a donut shop.

Lot of our info is cad files so big files to redo or back up we back up to disk and store off site. it is a pain but make it a planned time and date like every day or every Friday and it is a bit better.

[Beaur]

Myles,

use a service like Google Docs or any of the cloud based file storage places. All your work is packed up all the time. Unless you start using it for pictures you can't opt for free or cheapest level as text files aren't that big.

[kcin]

Sorry to hear about this, I've been there with my wife's business. Best way to handle it IMO is with a subscription cloud saving service. Carbonite is good. Save to any drive on your device and it gets duplicated on the cloud automatically. Less than $100/year for subscription.

Any other method relies on your discipline.

[MylesBAstor]

Thanks! Just with my crazy schedule, try and get writing done whenever get a break in the day. 😎 Good idea.

[MylesBAstor]

Myles,

use a service like Google Docs or any of the cloud based file storage places. All your work is packed up all the time. Unless you start using it for pictures you can't opt for free or cheapest level as text files aren't that big.

Thanks still am wondering why Word is not cloud based. Know they have One Note that is similar to Dropbox but not the same.

[mep]

It can get worse we have 7 computers at work we back up to disks end of each week with daily back ups to hard drives . We went thru a period of break ins where the computers were all stolen. They broke in thru a window and exited out the front door as the door self closes it caught the mice trailing behind they were lined up with their tails snapped off. Takes a day to buy new computers then the back ups then input several days work plus the work from the day you lost setting up.

New glass that you can not break with a hammer and they tried they hit it 20 or 30 times made a hole about the size of a hammer head in the first layer nevr broke the second pain. Roll down security doors for the main display windows.

Security alarm was of no use it worked but police time is so slow they are long gone. I have never had a camera system that maybe next or move next to a donut shop.

Lot of our info is cad files so big files to redo or back up we back up to disk and store off site. it is a pain but make it a planned time and date like every day or every Friday and it is a bit better.

Now that's funny!

[Bobm]

You would think that you only had to experience a loss like that once, and it would never happen again. But you would be wrong. We are creatures of habit, and if you don;t make a habit of backing up every time you sit down at the computer and add something to it, then you will probably get lax again.

[Beaur]

Thanks still am wondering why Word is not cloud based. Know they have One Note that is similar to Dropbox but not the same.

Myles,

They do have a cloud based service. It's $99/year and you get the Office suite with all updates and storage. It's called Office365, at least on the Mac.

[MylesBAstor]

Hmmmm....that's what I had. I just checked and have Office 365 Personal. Will have to do more investigation.

[MylesBAstor]

OK it does. One Note/One Drive as I mentioned before. But seems you have to drag file to One Note to save to cloud. Not say automatically like happens with dropbox. At least sometimes.

[1morerecord2clean]

It isn't just written copy, backup applies to music servers too. I use a powered 2TB hard drive with my Bluesound server. Sure, the CDs are packed away but if the Bluesound fails I really don't want to reload all of that music.

[Mortsnets]

I won a contest at PFO and got a bunch of DSD albums from Acoustic Sounds which all went to the bit bucket in the sky when my hard disk crashed. Now I have a usb hard disk for backup but my enthusiasm for computer audio has never really recovered.

[Steve Lefkowicz]

I won a contest at PFO and got a bunch of DSD albums from Acoustic Sounds which all went to the bit bucket in the sky when my hard disk crashed. Now I have a usb hard disk for backup but my enthusiasm for computer audio has never really recovered.

Just remember that a single drive USB "backup" is only putting off the inevitable loss off data, as all hard drives eventually fail. I have to deal with this at work all the time ( I support computer based laser retinal scanners) where doctors are too cheap to put a proper RAID 5, 6 or 10 array in for backup. Had a doc lose 13 years of patient data (and a 195,000 records) recently because his cheap $60 USB backup crashed. At least use a dual disk RAID 1 mirrored backup.

Good points. My local backup is a 1T mirrored array. The trick is the mirroring. Write to both disks, if one fails plug in a new one and everything is automatically replicated. Or buy 3 disk and rotate them; no real work involved and a recent backup is kept offline..

Once you suffer a crash you'll start backing up. Why wait until then

[JCOConnell]

Just remember that a single drive USB "backup" is only putting off the inevitable loss off data, as all hard drives eventually fail. I have to deal with this at work all the time ( I support computer based laser retinal scanners) where doctors are too cheap to put a proper RAID 5, 6 or 10 array in for backup. Had a doc lose 13 years of patient data (and a 195,000 records) recently because his cheap $60 USB backup crashed. At least use a dual disk RAID 1 mirrored backup.

with all the years doctors put in at school, don't they teach them anything about computers and recordkeeping?