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quinn222 at 09:34pm on 08/06/2009
quinn222 at 09:34pm on 08/06/2009I was being very careful and doing a full system backup and ghost of my laptop. It was going very well, about 40% done when I knocked the external destination drive off the desk onto the floor. Normally this would just be a pain in the ass because I double backup everything. So all the files located on that particular drive (aka: Montreal) are also on another drive (aka: New York). Just like all the files on New York are also on Boston. However (wait for it) on Sunday I backed up my portable hard drive to Montreal (including quite a few days of photographs) and did not take the time to copy that data over to New York. And last night I did a full data backup of my laptop to Montreal and also did not back that up to New York.
So the Ghost creation failed and I could not get my laptop to read the drive. I also could not get my desktop to read the drive. I was wondering how much a drive recovery was going to cost me when I finally got the desktop to see the drive. I'm currently copying everything on Montreal over to New York. With any luck tomorrow I can attempt the Ghost again.
Sheesh. What a moron. No excuse other then not paying attention to what I was doing.
So the Ghost creation failed and I could not get my laptop to read the drive. I also could not get my desktop to read the drive. I was wondering how much a drive recovery was going to cost me when I finally got the desktop to see the drive. I'm currently copying everything on Montreal over to New York. With any luck tomorrow I can attempt the Ghost again.
Sheesh. What a moron. No excuse other then not paying attention to what I was doing.
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I hope it all works out. :)
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I do tend to theme name my electronics. It does help keep track of stuff though.
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Backups
I think being able to keep track of stuff the way you seem to do is definitely not moronic, even if you do knock a hard drive to the floor once or twice--actually I think my hard drives are getting inured to being knocked around, it happens so frequently.
I could use an entire book just about drives, and backups. Over the past year, bought a lovely 1T internal drive for a new computer. I waited to use the computer until I had the drive installed. The computer kept freezing, and eventually my little techie friend who did the work told me the drive had fried. He later found out that the computer would only support 500 GB, and it already had a 320 installed.
Then I went through some incredible ordeal getting second internal drive for my Dell laptop; had to buy a special caddy; the one I bought fit all the Dell Inspiron laptops except apparently the one I owned. To make a long story short, after I finally got everything in gear to install it, the Dell simply wouldn't recognize it. So far I haven't had the heart to put out feelers to see if the laptop too was limited in its capacity.
Thinking it over, I realized that between the purchase of the hard drives, the caddies, and various related items, I could just have bought a new computer with one hard drive that was bigger than all of them.
Wish my laptop wasn't so recognizable, I'd just buy a newer one, but a seventeen inch screened Flamingo Pink laptop isn't easy to replace without a husband noticing.
Well, at least it sounds like I've found someone who may own more hard drives than I have.
On the other hand, you seem to be a photographer; while I have no excuse.
Re: Backups
In any case I do recommend using a series of external drives for storage and always work on the assumption that any drive (including internal) will die. It's not a matter of if, it's when. So there should be no data stored in only one place. If you back up to drive A, copy the backup to drive B. Always have at least 2 backups in 2 different locations. Then if at all possible have a backup on not just a different drive but in a totally different place. Online, at your office, whatever. That way if you suffer a fire or something you still have all your data.
I have two 500gig drives, two 1tb drives and 1 320gig drive. For now.
Re: Backups
My sister subscribes to a service called "Graphire" and I think she pays $50 a year for online backup of her computer. I'm not sure if they have a limit--if they do, I'm sure I'd exceed it and have to pay extra. But I keep thinking it would be a good thing or me to have "as a backup."
As far as "not if it fails, but when," my brother is constantly telling people that, when they ask why he continues to house his thousands of CDs. He has the contents in digital form as well, but, like me, he is 50 something, and it's hard to give up the concept that it's good to have something in "concrete" form as well as on a computer. He points out to is IPod loving friends and relatives that over the years he has had 10 hard drives fail, so it's nice to have the ultimate backup. Of course, he's in the music industry and gets to go to the Grammy's; they get a catalog every with the music in CD form quite cheap. Or at least they did when he was doing the most collecting.
He's also a talented photographer and Photoshop junkie; and I've always been mesmerized by what can be done, even before Photoshop, with a camera--and talent. I realize that you can have all the equipment in the world, and you can be competent, but if you have an artistic eye and soul, you can be amazing with a disposable camera.
I remember when I first started exploring the QAF online world, and seeing a fictional photo and journaling series by someone who I presume is you, unless there's another Quinn. It was about a trip, I think? I'd seen only a bit of fiction at the time, but I loved that series, because it looked so real, between the pictures and the writing. That was you, right? I don't remember where I'd even seen it, I don't think I was into LJ at the time, did it appear somewhere else? I was so sorry when I got to the end of it.
Thanks for the backup tips. I am really rather paranoid about losing stuff. Generally I have multiple copies; the digital equivalent of being afraid to throw anything out, but after laboriously accumulating a ton of old music from my past, I'd moved it to an external hard drive, since my computer at the time didn't have much room--and it was the only hard drive I'd ever had that crashed in such a short time, with so much on it.
Re: Backups
Yup, that was me. It was Adventures, which was a sequel to Correspondence. I need to repost Adventures to my web site, I keep forgetting about it.
Re: Backups
I used to reread my books so much when I was a kid that decades later, I can still quote whole paragraphs by heart. Stories AND pictures together--what bliss!
Re: Backups