Another Caution message to back-up your work!

[Mako Shark II]

Well Folks, after (only) a 4-month stint with my brand-new HP Laptop Computer, I just blew the bloody thing up last Thursday night when the Hard Drive crashed and burned. (Almost literally!) The HDD let loose and overheated.

Fortunately, my crack I.T. staff at Pinnacle Airlines Corp. http://www.pncl.com/ was able to recover my ALL local work & data, including my pictures. (Shameless plug, I know, but they really pulled my bacon out of the fire.)

Now, here’s the moral of the story:
Of Course (!) I had an external hard drive to back-up my data. The issue is that it didn’t synch up in the past 90-days, so I stood to lose all THAT data - which for me, was substantial.

SO, the message (again, for all of us ‘puter users) is: BACK-UP your work, especially Fish & Reef photography, before your's gets blown into virtual oblivion!!!!

I got lucky this time and they were able to replace my hard drive and salvage all my work, but OMG!! What a scare! Phew!
:dance:

 

[Rendos]

Online backups are great. Your info is available on the road too. So if you are out of town...no need to carry your laptop, just login through the web and pull your info onto any PC. Just a thought. I really did used to do this for a living up until a year ago or so.

 

[Mako Shark II]

Agreed, but the issue really is: Size. ASP's have their limits.

It took a couple hours for I.T. to re-populate my files onto a clean HDD.

"My Documents" currently has 41 GB from 35,904 files on 838 folders. (....and they're all legit....)

 

[crpeck]

Carbonite has no storage limit for $50/year and it runs in the backround and backs up everything that changes. All info is encrypted and you can even choose your own key if you don't trust them.

My daughter lost her entire iTunes library when she spilled water on her computer and it (literally) caught on fire.

Back up definitely = good idea

 

[schigara]

I have about 200gb that I try to keep safe from loss. External drives are good but they can fail like any other drive. I keep important data backed up on dvd every month.

Dvd discs are so cheap now that it makes sense to back up with them.

I still use a 120gb ext drive to sync the most important data but it all still gets burned if it's new.

 

[Goibot]

Fish i don't know much about but computers is another story. If you never ever want to worry about backups and you want the ability to stream music and photos to your TV. Get a Microsoft Home Server.

I built one for a little of nothing (literally old parts). You can get one ready to run from HP. A terabyte drive now runs under $200.

Works great - I get backed up on all computers at night and can play music to my stereo and pictures to my tv through an Xbox.

Tracy

 

[Mako Shark II]

I've heard that. Uses "extended media" s/w, right?

 

[bigfishdaddy]

Just another reason you should go Mac. You will not regret it, I made the change and will never by anything else. Purchased my daughter one for college 2 years ago, no problems. All her friends with the MS stuff have blown through 1-2 each.

I do understand the backup part, I am talking about reliability.

 

[schigara]

In 15 years and at least 20 different PC's, I have only had one hdd failure and I think it was a Seagate drive. I have always built my own pc's using good components.

I would not give a nickel for a name brand pc like Dell, HP or Compaq as all the money goes into advertising and packaging and are built with the cheapest components possible.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14164872#post14164872 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bigfishdaddy
Just another reason you should go Mac. You will not regret it, I made the change and will never by anything else. Purchased my daughter one for college 2 years ago, no problems. All her friends with the MS stuff have blown through 1-2 each.

I do understand the backup part, I am talking about reliability.

 

[Mako Shark II]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14165237#post14165237 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by schigara
In 15 years and at least 20 different PC's, I have only had one hdd failure and I think it was a Seagate drive.

Right On! I agree. I'm on my 7th or 8th Laptop, and this is the first time one (HDD) bombed, that way. And Yes Gary, it was a Blasted Seagate!! (Crap!) I'm going Western Digital next time.

And Daddy... for better or worse, the corporate world lives on Microsoft, so a Mac isn't an option. (Although The $pousal Unit loves her dual core i-Mac.)

I only have one 'puter and it handles it all.

 

[alkamar]

I prefer Seagate and have had the best luck with them. We currently use the 7200.10 model drives in our 60 TB police video backup raid array and haven't had any problems. I have worked on many computers that had a dead Western Digital. The worst drives I have dealt with were the Quantum Big Foot drives and the IBM Deskstars (Death Stars), but they have both been bought out. I do like my old Western Digital Raptor drive for shear speed and reliability for home use, but hey are also built beefier than the standard drive.

 

[Goibot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14160279#post14160279 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Mako Shark II
I've heard that. Uses "extended media" s/w, right?

Hey Marty, this is the one I'm talking about:

Home Server

It seems to be based on MS server 2003. But managing it is efortless. Mine sits in the corner. No monitor keyboard mouse or anything plugged into it. I give it power and the Lan and thats it.

You can buy one from HP pretty cheap (under $500 I think). And if you have an xBox 360 it is a perfect fit for streaming to your TV,
Tracy

 

[joeycadre]

this is why i love mac osx's time machine.

 

[MarineFlake]

Since Im in the computer support profession, why not wiegh in, right?
Home backups are about the last thing anyone thinks of. For that matter, I watch people at work do everything they can to avoid storing data on the 'shared drives' (Servers where data is routinely backed up)....Why? I have no clue. Same people who will come completely unglued when their local PC takes a dump and you have to tell them "Sorry nothing on tape for the last year so all your spread sheets are gone". O well. As for home backups, with the price of external USB disks (Or firewire) there really isn't a reason *not* to back up to spinning disk. DVDs, CDs, etc are ok, but nothing beats the ease and performance of spinning disk. Half a tera-byte (500GB) running less than $100.00, just no reason not to back up all the digital photos and MP3's you have along with any other personal data to spinning disk. I personally use 2 external USB drives. One is a primary, the other is a secondary, a complete duplicate of the primary. Some folks go so far as to rent lock boxes, etc, at the bank and will make a backup and place it off site to be sure in the event something happens physically to the site, there is a copy of the data somewhere. Internet (ASP) based backup is going to be much slower (If your a photo hobbiest like me that just wont do. I can dump 8 gig on the drive from one concert/event.) than local USB disk. Not to mention one FACT of the internet is...Once your data is in someone else's hands, you can NEVER, NEVER, NEVER guarantee that it won't show up somewhere else. You completely buy into the fact that your data is now accessible by people you don't know and quite frankly, shouldn't trust. It may be ok for some photos of Grandpa and your itunes collections of Sanatra, not someplace you want those hot photos of the wife showing up...PLUS you can take USB drives with you (I use them with my laptio to DDJ with) and plug them into any USB capable computer (Yes even a iMAC/Mini even if yours is Windows based, with some caveats) and get to your data. The Apple PC vs Windows PC is pretty much a waste of text, so I won't go there. Suffice to say I have used and support both (Though very limited support of Apples) and guess what? Its all intel, Seagate, etc inside now, so deciding to move to an Apple or away from an Apple based on some imaginary hardware MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) ratio one has come up with based on their home experience will prove to be a costly reality check at some point. Yes folks, even the Apple Store has a refurbished section ; ) Point is there are *many* options for storage these days and we should take advantage of the technology and put it to work for us! I will now step down from my soap box.

Happy Reefing!