The Coffee House

[jcdeboever]

Bud called me and said his external hard drive pooped out. Year old Seagate. He has a wedding on there he was working on. He got an estimate to recover for $3 grand. He is bumbed. Sad thing is we talked about it a couple months ago, how important it is to backup. He didn't buy the drive I suggested either, I strongly opposed the Seagate but he wanted to save a few bucks... I feel really bad for him. I told him if it were me, and I was doing a paid gig, I'd leave them on the flash card and back the card up. We talked about several strategic solutions, he opted for the worst scenario....

The hard drive in my very old All-In-One desktop went out a few months ago. I took it to 'Adult School', it was replaced with all the programs for $25 ... plus Gary tossed in a $20 tip.

His drive was strictly photos.

 

[snowbear141 72]

I think it's time for the Mac/Win debaters to go play in the wind and rain and snow. And for the record, I miss my Commodore 128 (the one with dual boot to CP/M built in) as well as the more grown-up PDP 11/84 and RSX11.

 

[Cortian]

Bud called me and said his external hard drive pooped out. Year old Seagate. ... Sad thing is ...

It used to astonish me the cavalier way people treated their data. After seeing it so many times over the years it no longer does. Was talking to a friend at my gym a couple weeks ago and he says "We need to buy a new card for our camera. The one that's in there is nearly full." Looked at him "You know those cards can, and do fail, right?" Looked at me in astonishment. "No, I didn't know that." Yikes! I've had the exact same conversation with PC users: "You know hard drives die, right? And, if it does, all those gigs of data and photos you've got on there will simply be gone, right?" Sometimes I get "But aren't there recovery services?" "Yeah, for up to tens of thousands of dollars." They're always surprised. They also rarely do anything about it, even after being educated.

I have never liked Seagate drives, btw.

Our photos get moved off the cards and onto the home network server as soon as practical. The network server is running RAID 1 storage (mirrored SSDs--and I chose the most reliable at the time). They're automatically backed-up to an external USB drive every day in the wee hours of the morning. Each month that drive is swapped with the one stored in a safe and a new backup sequence is started.

This does mean that if something is lost or corrupted and it goes unnoticed for ±30 days it'll be gone for good, but there's only so much one can do. That being said: I plan to eventually replace the USB external drive with probably an eSATA dock, and bump the number of backups in rotation to at least three, if not five.

... for the record, I miss my Commodore 128 (the one with dual boot to CP/M built in) as well as the more grown-up PDP 11/84 and RSX11.

My last "toy" computer was an Amiga A3000. It's still downstairs. If I ever get the Man Cave Project completed, I might try firing it up again

I miss my Sun Sparc Solaris Unix boxen.

 

[jcdeboever]

Bud called me and said his external hard drive pooped out. Year old Seagate. ... Sad thing is ...

It used to astonish me the cavalier way people treated their data. After seeing it so many times over the years it no longer does. Was talking to a friend at my gym a couple weeks ago and he says "We need to buy a new card for our camera. The one that's in there is nearly full." Looked at him "You know those cards can, and do fail, right?" Looked at me in astonishment. "No, I didn't know that." Yikes! I've had the exact same conversation with PC users: "You know hard drives die, right? And, if it does, all those gigs of data and photos you've got on there will simply be gone, right?" Sometimes I get "But aren't there recovery services?" "Yeah, for up to tens of thousands of dollars." They're always surprised. They also rarely do anything about it, even after being educated.

I have never liked Seagate drives, btw.

Our photos get moved off the cards and onto the home network server as soon as practical. The network server is running RAID 1 storage (mirrored SSDs--and I chose the most reliable at the time). They're automatically backed-up to an external USB drive every day in the wee hours of the morning. Each month that drive is swapped with the one stored in a safe and a new backup sequence is started.

This does mean that if something is lost or corrupted and it goes unnoticed for ±30 days it'll be gone for good, but there's only so much one can do. That being said: I plan to eventually replace the USB external drive with probably an eSATA dock, and bump the number of backups in rotation to at least three, if not five.

Remember the Seagate 7200.10 drives?. Super high failure rate. When I was building PC's, I always used Western Digital Black drives and IBM SSD's. Corporate stuff, IBM SAS drives. I back mine up on a mirrored system and a Amazon cloud. I store my negatives in plastic binder sleeves, won't be losing those in my lifetime.

 

[Gary A.]

Gary loved his Atari computers. Gary is one of those cavalier people you speak of, he likes caviar. He doesn't backup ... he is thinking it is time he did so.

 

[Cortian]

Remember the Seagate 7200.10 drives?.

Nope, because the last Seacrate drives I ever used were Barracuda SCSI drives in a pair of DEC StorageWorks RAID boxes.

Since then... lessee... WD Black, or at least Blue, and... uh... Fujitsu enterprise class SCSI drives, when I had my choice?

Had one RAID box built for me using IBM UltraStar SCSI drives. I used to call 'em "UltraScorch"s, because they ran so bloody hot. Had pretty regular failures out of those. In fact: Once had a double-drive fault. Luckily, though, the second fault waited until the array had finished rebuilding itself before raising its ugly head, so nothing was lost.

 

[snowbear141 72]

Well, watching the tree-cutting branch (intended) of the work government was fun to watch. A big pine tree near the office was blown down by the friendly storm, this morning, blocking one lane of the road. A little while ago, the workers were there using an axe to remove the limbs/boughs, and a hand saw (it looked like a large Japanese style) to cut up most of the trunk, trying to clear the road and sidewalk. Eventually there were 4 trucks, a mulcher and a van there.

The part that was fun to watch was the actual cutting -- done by a guy in a coat and tie, while the uniformed/day-glow vest guys watched.

 

[jcdeboever]

Remember the Seagate 7200.10 drives?.

Nope, because the last Seacrate drives I ever used were Barracuda SCSI drives in a pair of DEC StorageWorks RAID boxes.

Since then... lessee... WD Black, or at least Blue, and... uh... Fujitsu enterprise class SCSI drives, when I had my choice?

Had one RAID box built for me using IBM UltraStar SCSI drives. I used to call 'em "UltraScorch"s, because they ran so bloody hot. Had pretty regular failures out of those. In fact: Once had a double-drive fault. Luckily, though, the second fault waited until the array had finished rebuilding itself before raising its ugly head, so nothing was lost.

I remember all those. Those IBM' had to be cooled correctly as I recall. Geez, getting my brain working today....

 

[snowbear141 72]

Just

I think it's time for the Mac/Win debaters to go play in the wind and rain and snow. And for the record, I miss my Commodore 128 (the one with dual boot to CP/M built in) as well as the more grown-up PDP 11/84 and RSX11.

Just be sure to set the volume on the tape drive to seven.

Naw - I had the disk drives. There was a 9-track tape drive on the PDP, though, but no volume control. We did have to hit the heads with an alcohol wipe every morning before running the records dump, and after every 3 tapes (Scotch "Black Watch") when I was making my backups.

I used an old tape as garland, and write rings as ornaments on the office Christmas tree; shredded greenbar as a tree skirt.

 

[davidharmier60]

I never lost a Hard Drive in the old puter.
Did lose power supply twice.
Y'all are scaring me.
More I think about it that old thing was running XP. Anything modern is going to be a nitemare.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

 

[SquarePeg1]

R

Bud called me and said his external hard drive pooped out. Year old Seagate. He has a wedding on there he was working on. He got an estimate to recover for $3 grand. He is bumbed. Sad thing is we talked about it a couple months ago, how important it is to backup. He didn't buy the drive I suggested either, I strongly opposed the Seagate but he wanted to save a few bucks... I feel really bad for him. I told him if it were me, and I was doing a paid gig, I'd leave them on the flash card and back the card up. We talked about several strategic solutions, he opted for the worst scenario....

That really stinks. I do not ever delete from my address cards until photos are safely uploaded to all my backups. Not really necessary for personal work but I once had my laptop die on me and my external back up drive USB port fail right after. Had to buy some hardware to read the drive to get the photos off the external. I have both physical and online backups now.


Sitting here in my giant Honda Pilot suv outside the school and the whole car is rocking in this wind. Saw lots of tree limbs down on my way here. I know which streets to avoid due to the trees being old and branches hanging over the street. Would not chance any of them in this weather. Had to get out a minute ago to re-close the back door because the dog didn’t shut it all the way. Man it is windy as f out there.

 

[JonA_CT]

No kidding, Sharon.

I’m feeling for our kids who walk home today.

 

[Gary A.]

It is misty here. Gary put a raincoat on Maggie for our morning walk. Removed the raincoat when we hit the creek. Maggie and Max, her BFF, immediately ran up and down the creek for the rest of the walk.

 

[limr50]

It's like a war zone here. In the past couple of hours, no fewer than 10 fire trucks, 5-6 cars from the sheriff's office, and 3 EMT trucks zoomed past or stopped in front of my house. Wires and trees down everywhere, roads blocked, and a transformer fire. Still snowing.

Power was blinking all morning long and finally gave up the ghost again about half an hour ago. Thankfully, I had just finished making some popcorn.

 

[waday]

Here, we're just getting bad wind. Nieces and nephews aren't in school, because of power outage.

The power went out in our office outside of Philly. They have white-out conditions.

Stay safe all.