Questions about computer storage devices

[LMTC]

I back up our business working files pretty much as MossRoad described above...and more than once I have found one of the DVDs or CDs (I've been doing this since before DVD burners) wouldn't read. The two copies get kept apart....one in the house (home office), the other in an undisclosed secure location that is not the house. Unless I screw up, forget, or get distracted, I usually have discs current to one or two weeks, and current to real time on some remote drives. I think my external WD drive uses a firewire connection rather than USB, which I believe is faster.

Years ago I lost a HD with important business information. I paid dearly to a data recovery place who recovered only part of it. After that I went to at least two drives and double discs. PIA? Sometimes. But when the master disc with my son's wedding pictures decided to barf, guess who was able to pull them out of backup? (I imagine the photographer would have had them too, but you get the point) I now backup on two networked PCs as well, replicating data on 3 HDs with different controllers. I assumed my external HD was using the same controller as the internal HDs on that PC, but if I read MossRoad's post correctly, it is a separate controller too.

 

[woodchuckie]

Lots of places offer free unlimited storage space for pictures you upload to them. I've been doing it for over two years now with no loses or problems.
Yahoo,walmart,target,snapfish and more. My dsl provider also provides lots of storage on the net.

 

[IslandTractor]

Lots of places offer free unlimited storage space for pictures you upload to them.

I agree these sites offer another way to back up data off site. I would personally not have them as my ownly backup in case they go out of business etc but they sure are a good bang for the buck as a secondary site. The other advantage they offer is that you can back up or retrieve files via internet so they are useful when traveling.

 

[KubotaSteve]

I keep my pictures on my desktop as well as my laptop. Then I create a backup DVD (in the past it was a CD until I got my new machine). I then go over to my mom's house and upload the pictures to her computer as an off site storage. I have over 15,000 pictures on my machine now and just finished tagging them using Adobe Photo Album. It was well worth the time and effort.

On a side note, I got the free upgrade to Windows Vista but have been very hesitant as I haven't heard anything good about it. I'll probably stay with XP for now.

 

[riptides]

Lots of places offer free unlimited storage space for pictures you upload to them. I've been doing it for over two years now with no loses or problems.
Yahoo,walmart,target,snapfish and more. My dsl provider also provides lots of storage on the net.

I am not knocking this, "net storage", but I prefer to keep my data under my control. When one looks at third party services for data storage, be sure to do a risk assessment.

-Mike Z.

 

[jwstewar]

I keep my pictures on my desktop as well as my laptop. Then I create a backup DVD (in the past it was a CD until I got my new machine). I then go over to my mom's house and upload the pictures to her computer as an off site storage. I have over 15,000 pictures on my machine now and just finished tagging them using Adobe Photo Album. It was well worth the time and effort.

On a side note, I got the free upgrade to Windows Vista but have been very hesitant as I haven't heard anything good about it. I'll probably stay with XP for now.

I would get the Vista CD, but wouldn't necessarily load it - at least right away. I would let SP1 come out and then load it.

The multiple computer/multiple house is a good solution - as long as you are right next door to each other. Back to the Net storage places, I wouldn't count on them to be my "back-up." Who knows how long these places will last. They wouldn't be the first company to just say one day that "we're done" and you not get a chance to get your stuff back down. Also I wouldn't want a lot of my stuff getting stored there where I can't control it.

 

[Bird]

OK, you guys have convinced me that the only way to go is to do the backups on CDs or DVDs and I don't even know the difference between a CD and a DVD except that the DVD holds a lot more. So far, my experience with DVD is limited to only occasionally, but rarely, putting a DVD movie in that contraption attached to one of our TVs.

As for CDs . . . , this old Dell has a CD drive that'll supposedly read and write. So far, it's not had a problem reading them, but writing is a different matter. At one time, I was able to copy some of our photos onto a CD, but now I can burn a CD with my Microsoft Works files; i.e., word processor, data base, and spreadsheets, but I cannot get it to copy either the photos or the Quicken files.

So this morning, I went to CompUSA where the selection and possibilities are mind boggling, but I eventually bought a "CompUSA Ultimate External Triple DVD Burner", along with a few blank DVDs and CDs. Later today, or this weekend, I'll see if I can install and get it to work. There are two CDs in the box. One is "nero" and says for DVD rewriters only and the other is "Cyberlink PowerDVD 6" and of course I have no idea what they'll do.

 

[jwstewar]

Bird,

The Nero is the software that you can use to write the files to the DVD or CD. I've used it, fairly straight forward and does an OK job.

The PowerDVD is actually a software package used to view DVDs movies on your computer. It is a $29 software package that makes your $1500 computer work like a $59 DVD player.

 

[KubotaSteve]

As for CDs . . . , this old Dell has a CD drive that'll supposedly read and write. So far, it's not had a problem reading them, but writing is a different matter. At one time, I was able to copy some of our photos onto a CD, but now I can burn a CD with my Microsoft Works files; i.e., word processor, data base, and spreadsheets, but I cannot get it to copy either the photos or the Quicken files.

So this morning, I went to CompUSA where the selection and possibilities are mind boggling, but I eventually bought a "CompUSA Ultimate External Triple DVD Burner", along with a few blank DVDs and CDs. Later today, or this weekend, I'll see if I can install and get it to work. There are two CDs in the box. One is "nero" and says for DVD rewriters only and the other is "Cyberlink PowerDVD 6" and of course I have no idea what they'll do.

Bird:
Burning CD's and DVD's require a lot of the computer's resources especially if it is an older machine. On my old Dell, I couldn't do anything except play spider solitare while burning a CD or else it would quit on me.
On my new machine, I still don't push the issue when burning DVD's or CD's but this new machine does it so fast I don't really need to occupy my time.
Good luck and hope the DVD burner works well for you.
One other point that was brought up in a safe thread a while back is that even though you have a fireproof safe, it may not protect your CD's or DVD's as most safes are not rated for computer media but for paper. Just a thought because once you loose your pictures they can't be replaced which is one reason I like onsite and offsite storage.

 

[Jagmandave]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but why are you guys having problems with IE7? I've got it on all three of my computers at home and work and have no problems other than I shut off the phishing filter as it slowed things down a bit.............what's wrong that you're going back to IE6? BTW, I like the tabbed browsing feature in 7, used it before in Firefox and I'm glad it migrated over into IE 7.

 

[Bird]

I don't want to hijack the thread, but why are you guys having problems with IE7? I've got it on all three of my computers at home and work and have no problems other than I shut off the phishing filter as it slowed things down a bit.............what's wrong that you're going back to IE6? BTW, I like the tabbed browsing feature in 7, used it before in Firefox and I'm glad it migrated over into IE 7.

I actually did not have a real problem with IE7 and even liked the "tabs" a bit, but I didn't like the "tool bar?" across the top of the page as well as I do IE6, and then in spite of the complaints by many of our members about Norton software, I actually LIKE my Norton SystemWorks and I periodically run the cleanup feature. For some unknown reason, Norton would not remove cookies with IE7 even though that option showed to be turned on.

 

[Bird]

Thanks Jim & Steve. It sounds like I don't even need to install PowerDVD since I can't imagine myself ever watching a movie on the computer. And Steve I do intend to keep an off site copy of my backups as well as the ones in the fire safe.

 

[MossRoad]

Thanks Jim & Steve. It sounds like I don't even need to install PowerDVD since I can't imagine myself ever watching a movie on the computer. And Steve I do intend to keep an off site copy of my backups as well as the ones in the fire safe.

Bird,
Last summer we took a 13 day road trip out west. Instead of taking personal DVD players, music players, computers, etc... we only took one laptop, a stack of blank DVDs and a good selection of DVDs for the kid's to watch. The kids were able to watch DVD movies on the laptop and listen to music and at night, after a day of picture taking, we were able to copy the files from the camera to the laptop, make a couple backup DVDs for safe keeping, watch a slideshow of the pictures we took that day, and watch a movie before bedtime. So, I know you will probably not watch DVD movies on the home computer, but it is neat to have the capability. Also, if you have a video camera, it is nice to pump the video into the home computer, where you can edit it and make a DVD for safe keeping, or to mail to family elsewhere. Then it is really handy to be able to watch the finished DVD on the computer. This stuff is really neat. Even simple DVD editing software can do amazing things these days. I have a friend that retired 15 years ago. He is pushing 80 and is scanning in all of his old family photos as well as video clips and even old home movies transferred from film and making very professional looking DVD presentations on his home PC of his family tree for his grandkids. The opening screen has a sepia tone flavor with an oval picture of him and his wife in the middle. Around them are smaller oval pictures of his children. If you click on any of those, it takes you deeper into that branch of the family. If you click on his photo, it takes you to his ancestors, and likewise for his wife's picture. Really, really neat stuff that he taught himself to do.

 

[Bird]

David, it must be nice to know what you're doing and how to do it. I went ahead and installed the software from both of these CDs and sure enough, with that PowerDVD program, I can play DVD movies on my computer (which I don't care about at all), but I've made no progress at all in learning to use this contraption to burn CDs or DVDs which is what I bought it for.

 

[MossRoad]

(as I recall, I haven't used Nero for a long time) if you put a blank DVD into the drive and close it, about 30 seconds later, Nero should pop up and ask you what you want to do. Select one of the options that allows you to copy files to a folder to be burned, or make a disk, etc...

then just open a Windows Explorer session and highlight the files that you want to copy to the DVD. Drag them to the nero application and they will appear there. As soon as you get all of the files that you wish to copy to DVD, there should be a BURN button or something similar. Just push it and it should take off.

 

[Bird]

Yep, you click on "Burn" and it shows "process started" and a time and it slowly works its way up to 100% and shows "burn successfully completed" or something similar, but it doesn't actually put anything at all on the discs. In fact, the light to indicate the drive is running never comes on, and I've tried that repeatedly with both CD and DVD discs with no luck. However, I did get it to copy photos onto a CD; just can't get it to do anything with a DVD disc.

 

[Bird]

I can forget Nero and just use the old Windows XP CD Writing Wizard and I can copy files to the new drive on CDs; just haven't figure out any way to make the DVDs work. It'll probably be something simple if I ever figure out what it is.

 

[MossRoad]

I can forget Nero and just use the old Windows XP CD Writing Wizard and I can copy files to the new drive on CDs; just haven't figure out any way to make the DVDs work. It'll probably be something simple if I ever figure out what it is.

You may want to look for a simulation or test mode that may be enabled. It does everything except actually turn on the laser to burn the disk.

 

[Bird]

Will wonders never cease? I finally burned my first DVD! I'm slow, but I'm learning. Of course this external drive says for USB 2.0 but will work on the slower USB 1.1; just slow. Now I asked the young salesman how to find out whether I have 1.1 or 2.0 and he didn't know. Well, I didn't know either, but I've now learned that I have the 1.1 but it works, and actually fast enough for my use.

I finally found that the reason I couldn't get Nero to burn CDs or DVDs was that it was trying to send the stuff to my old original internal CD drive instead of the new external CD/DVD drive. It's taken me forever to catch on to that because it didn't specify a drive; just "my disc" and no indicator lights came on, even on the old drive, and no dialogue box popped up to even tell me there was no disc in the drive.

 

[Bedlam]

I have dealt with the computer crashing and having to reformat , and loose some pics. so now, I back everything up on yahoo photos. I use two accounts also.It is an easy upload tool to use. and you can set it so certain people can view them if you wish to allow it.
Now its habit for me to offload the pics and put them on yahoo right away.
Of course I also save them to other places too.
but the yahoo backup is good, as its not on your computer.
Hope this helps.
Al