Willl
Elite Member
What do you think is in that box ?
computer back up
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GPintheMitten
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Magic smoke is in the box. But if smoke starts coming out of it, it will fail.
And it costs a lot to get the smoke back in.
And it costs a lot to get the smoke back in.
RickO
Silver Member
I guess it does have platters.. I copied a file to it and could hear them spinning. I just thought since it is so small and light that it used some type of storage like a flash drive or memory uses .. although it would be very expensive if that were the case.
ragkar
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I guess everyone is aware that commercial stamped CD's have a claimed storage life of 100-200 years if they are not damaged. But the situation with CD-R's that you burn yourself is quite different. They may only last a couple years.
CD-R's are entirely different technology. The dye layer is sprayed onto the polycarbonate. And you burn data into the dye layer.
Here's an important link on that subject.
How Permanent is Your CD-R?
CD-R's are entirely different technology. The dye layer is sprayed onto the polycarbonate. And you burn data into the dye layer.
Here's an important link on that subject.
How Permanent is Your CD-R?
Willl
Elite Member
I've read the same, kinda scary. Up till those articles I was thinking burning CD/DVD's was my "permanent storage" for my pics. Not any more I guess.
Speaking of, just got the wife a 1 terabyte external HP HD for her art'sy pics, little over 100 bucks.
Terabyte,,,,,man, that's a lot of space. I still have a working 500 Mb HD in my junk drawer.
Lately I'm thinking I better have "3" copies of the 'important' stuff.
(Quote)important stuff(end quote), what are you guys calling the important stuff ?, to me,,,it's the pics,,,can't replace those.
heehaw
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a little late now, but wally world just had 500g external hard drives for $50.. or 250g portable external hd's for the same price: a real bargain from what i have been looking at:
heehaw
heehaw
buckeyefarmer
Epic Contributor
I keep at least 3 copies of all pictures / video, plus I recently burned DVD's for offsite storage. Put another copy on my new computer this week, got a new 1 TB drive, so might as well use it. USB drives are cheap these days. Plus, I keep the pics on the original memory cards, I hardly ever reuse them any more. Even on vacation I will back up the pictures every day and a 2nd backup on a portable drive. Can't have enough backups.
dmccarty
Super Star Member
Another vote for the USB drives.
I have three on one system at the moment. Two 1 TB drives and a 500MB drive. One of the 1TB drives holds the automagic backup that runs on the system every few days. As well as my manual copy of important data. The 500MB drive holds a manual copy as well. The second 1 TB was about $100 over the holidays and has the manual copies as well. I am about to make a backup of the system to this drive and bring it to work of off site storage. It will return home every few months to be updated.
Most of the data are photos.
I also burn DVDs to hold data. Two sets. One that stays home and one for offsite. I am using a supply of "cheap" DVDs I found on sale. They are a good named brand but there are better media out there for archiving. Seems like the better stuff was $1-2 a DVD. Expensive but the photos are priceless so next time I will spend a bit more money.
USB thumb drives are also cheap and I have a 8GB and a 4GB drive that I keep our important non photographs copied onto as well. That data is on the DVDs and the USB drives as well.
When buying a USB drive or any other hard drive for that matter check for the warranty. The warranties I have seen are 1, 3, and 5 years. I go for 5 years.
I have looked at online storage, Nikon has a site but for what I would pay per year I can buy two 1TB USB drives each year. Now the website does offer you a way to show your photos if you want, Type of account and Pricing system - QuickGuide - my Picturetown
Later,
Dan
I have three on one system at the moment. Two 1 TB drives and a 500MB drive. One of the 1TB drives holds the automagic backup that runs on the system every few days. As well as my manual copy of important data. The 500MB drive holds a manual copy as well. The second 1 TB was about $100 over the holidays and has the manual copies as well. I am about to make a backup of the system to this drive and bring it to work of off site storage. It will return home every few months to be updated.
Most of the data are photos.
I also burn DVDs to hold data. Two sets. One that stays home and one for offsite. I am using a supply of "cheap" DVDs I found on sale. They are a good named brand but there are better media out there for archiving. Seems like the better stuff was $1-2 a DVD. Expensive but the photos are priceless so next time I will spend a bit more money.
USB thumb drives are also cheap and I have a 8GB and a 4GB drive that I keep our important non photographs copied onto as well. That data is on the DVDs and the USB drives as well.
When buying a USB drive or any other hard drive for that matter check for the warranty. The warranties I have seen are 1, 3, and 5 years. I go for 5 years.
I have looked at online storage, Nikon has a site but for what I would pay per year I can buy two 1TB USB drives each year. Now the website does offer you a way to show your photos if you want, Type of account and Pricing system - QuickGuide - my Picturetown
Later,
Dan
I thought I had replied to this a while ago, I guess not.
Anyway, it depends what you want in a "back-up".
I put it in quotation marks because it means different things to different folk.
For recovering things that have been erased (deleted) by accident requires somewhat less than recovering EVERYTHING when a hard disk suffers a head crash and cannot be re-booted.
For lost files you can copy them out to CDs, DVDs or thumb drives; quick, simple and cheap - you just have to have a system for knowing what is stored on what.
For hard disk physical crashes where the O/S MFD boot block etc are lost the only practical solution is an image back-up.
I use this; EASEUS ToDo backup 1.1
It is free (good) but is ONLY good for complete image back-ups, i.e. there is no incremental back-up option (less good).
It does NOT require exclusive locks on the volumes that it backs up, i.e. it can back up the C drive while it is in use.
This means I don't have to shut the system down for back-ups, although I do them overnight when I'm not "using" it per se.
It CAN also mount backed up images as volumes, so you don't need to restore a whole image just to get back a file that you have deleted by accident (and emptied from the trash bin).
I use it to back up my entire drive, (MFD, windoze, Linux, everything except unix swap partitions) about once a month onto a terabyte USB drive.
These are about $120 now.
Right after installing this one should create the bootable recovery media.
This is just a bootable CD or DVD with a copy of the program on it.
Anyway, it depends what you want in a "back-up".
I put it in quotation marks because it means different things to different folk.
For recovering things that have been erased (deleted) by accident requires somewhat less than recovering EVERYTHING when a hard disk suffers a head crash and cannot be re-booted.
For lost files you can copy them out to CDs, DVDs or thumb drives; quick, simple and cheap - you just have to have a system for knowing what is stored on what.
For hard disk physical crashes where the O/S MFD boot block etc are lost the only practical solution is an image back-up.
I use this; EASEUS ToDo backup 1.1
It is free (good) but is ONLY good for complete image back-ups, i.e. there is no incremental back-up option (less good).
It does NOT require exclusive locks on the volumes that it backs up, i.e. it can back up the C drive while it is in use.
This means I don't have to shut the system down for back-ups, although I do them overnight when I'm not "using" it per se.
It CAN also mount backed up images as volumes, so you don't need to restore a whole image just to get back a file that you have deleted by accident (and emptied from the trash bin).
I use it to back up my entire drive, (MFD, windoze, Linux, everything except unix swap partitions) about once a month onto a terabyte USB drive.
These are about $120 now.
Right after installing this one should create the bootable recovery media.
This is just a bootable CD or DVD with a copy of the program on it.
arrabil
Veteran Member
eepete is on the money. You want two hard drives. One onsite, one offsite. I replace mine every five years or after the first error of any kind, whichever comes first. Yeah it costs money.... you need to ask yourself how much your pictures/memories are worth. Its kind of like springing for the best auto policy. I find people think having a computer is cheap but it the furthest thing from the truth if you want it done right.
Flash drives and DVD+-Rs are only rated for ~10 years by the manufacturer. But if your data fits in their limited space, I'd go for it. Again, burn two, one offsite, one onsite. Having a backup near your computer during a fire is the equivalent of having no backup. Same with the "media-rated" safes. 10-30 minutes of fire rating is not really a backup plan even when you're next door to the fire company.
I take my offsite drive to my mom's. I backup her stuff and take it back with me. A copy of my stuff is always offsite and so is her's.
Online backups are alright if you have a good Internet connection. I actually wrote the entire frontend/backend for one of them and a common feature is that you can encrypt your entire backup. The one I wrote encrypts each file individually. I think thats better than the archive as a whole (makes restoring one file possible without downloading the whole archive). Its safe because the backup company doesn't [shouldn't?] know your password and the encryption cannot be cracked because its a one way algorithm. The catch with the encryption is that you better not forget the password or the downloaded files are completely useless. Again though, you still need to store one backup onsite. You would be rightfully terrified if you knew how often how little effort went into backing up the online backups at the company itself.
Windows Backup is a fantastic program for home or business use if you're willing to run it by hand or via the Windows Scheduler. I wouldn't download anything else because Microsoft always has all the right "hooks" into Windows to prevent "in-use file errors" and the like.
If your main concern is backing up pictures, you can stick to storing My Pictures/My Documents. But I like getting everything in the backup. You never know when someone put something out of place or when some stupid program stored something you need in it's own directory. I've also had a case where the only copy of a software's serial number was in the registry cause the customer lost the CD and box. Good thing we had a registry backup.
Speaking of which.... don't forget to store all your purchased software's serial numbers in a text file on your computer. In case of fire you're going to be happy you have it. Microsoft Office is one of those programs where Microsoft has no idea what your purchased serial number is even after its registered. So if you lose it, you have no way of proving you own it. None. Believe me, I've been down that road.
I actually tell my prospective clients that I will not do any IT work for them unless they agree to implement all of the above. No way I'm getting a phone call at 9pm some Saturday because they didn't want to spend five hundred bucks. I've even had one guy tell me he doesn't need me then. He didn't realize that was a mutually inclusive statement.
EDIT: I personally run Retrospect 8 Mac and backup all of my servers and laptops nightly to a separate drive. I manually copy the data to the offsite drive approximately once per month and store it a few miles aways. I swap the offsite backup drives to another state every three or four months. So if you're counting, I'm using three backup drives: onsite, offsite local, offsite remote. No, I still don't feel 100% secure but I do feel 99.9%.
Flash drives and DVD+-Rs are only rated for ~10 years by the manufacturer. But if your data fits in their limited space, I'd go for it. Again, burn two, one offsite, one onsite. Having a backup near your computer during a fire is the equivalent of having no backup. Same with the "media-rated" safes. 10-30 minutes of fire rating is not really a backup plan even when you're next door to the fire company.
I take my offsite drive to my mom's. I backup her stuff and take it back with me. A copy of my stuff is always offsite and so is her's.
Online backups are alright if you have a good Internet connection. I actually wrote the entire frontend/backend for one of them and a common feature is that you can encrypt your entire backup. The one I wrote encrypts each file individually. I think thats better than the archive as a whole (makes restoring one file possible without downloading the whole archive). Its safe because the backup company doesn't [shouldn't?] know your password and the encryption cannot be cracked because its a one way algorithm. The catch with the encryption is that you better not forget the password or the downloaded files are completely useless. Again though, you still need to store one backup onsite. You would be rightfully terrified if you knew how often how little effort went into backing up the online backups at the company itself.
Windows Backup is a fantastic program for home or business use if you're willing to run it by hand or via the Windows Scheduler. I wouldn't download anything else because Microsoft always has all the right "hooks" into Windows to prevent "in-use file errors" and the like.
If your main concern is backing up pictures, you can stick to storing My Pictures/My Documents. But I like getting everything in the backup. You never know when someone put something out of place or when some stupid program stored something you need in it's own directory. I've also had a case where the only copy of a software's serial number was in the registry cause the customer lost the CD and box. Good thing we had a registry backup.
Speaking of which.... don't forget to store all your purchased software's serial numbers in a text file on your computer. In case of fire you're going to be happy you have it. Microsoft Office is one of those programs where Microsoft has no idea what your purchased serial number is even after its registered. So if you lose it, you have no way of proving you own it. None. Believe me, I've been down that road.
I actually tell my prospective clients that I will not do any IT work for them unless they agree to implement all of the above. No way I'm getting a phone call at 9pm some Saturday because they didn't want to spend five hundred bucks. I've even had one guy tell me he doesn't need me then. He didn't realize that was a mutually inclusive statement.
EDIT: I personally run Retrospect 8 Mac and backup all of my servers and laptops nightly to a separate drive. I manually copy the data to the offsite drive approximately once per month and store it a few miles aways. I swap the offsite backup drives to another state every three or four months. So if you're counting, I'm using three backup drives: onsite, offsite local, offsite remote. No, I still don't feel 100% secure but I do feel 99.9%.
