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[OT] Mass storage
 

offline Ceri JC from Jefferson City (United States) on 2006-05-02 15:09 [#01891355]
Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Show recordbag



As a result of these events, I have lost my (bloody
enormous) sample library. Somehow, I didn't realise this
when I made the original HD crash thread. I'd built it up
over about 6 years and was about 60gb. Whilst I have a lot
of it on CD/DVD/other machines, there's still about 20gb
lost, gone for ever, some of which were things I'd
recorded/synthesised/made and hence can never be replaced.

Now, the feeling isn't quite as gutting as losing all the
music you've ever done (I know from bitter experience), but
it comes a close second.

So, any ways of protecting large quantities of samples,
ideally whilst retaining the directory structure (to enable
it to be restored more easily) and also keeping it updated?
In the past, I've had it do a nightly scheduled task to back
it up to the other disk, but since it has gotten so big, my
second disk couldn't handle it and I disabled that. I also
think that nightly copying of 60gb+ of data will wear both
drives out a lot quicker.

Another thing would be external firewire/usb hard drives,
but a few people I know have had problems with them (data
being mysteriously lost, auto-synch with designated drive
not working, etc.) and the cost puts me off a bit.

Burning to DVDs is all well and good, but it's difficult to
manually track where each of the changes/updated files have
been made, and only back up the new stuff. It also relies on
being proactive in backups, whereas I'd far rather it was
automated.

I'd rather not have something network based as when I
rebuild the machine (which I really will need to get round
to doing at long last) I want it completely stand alone.

Without looking at sillily expensive things like tape
robots/blade servers full of HDs, are there any other
options?


 

offline evolume from seattle (United States) on 2006-05-02 15:10 [#01891357]
Points: 10965 Status: Regular



thoughest


 

offline evolume from seattle (United States) on 2006-05-02 15:12 [#01891358]
Points: 10965 Status: Regular



i've considered an external drive too, but i just don't know
where my money should be spent. i like the convenience of
USB but yeah, like you say, it seems a bit unreliable, the
stuff that's out there.


 

offline earthleakage from tell the world you're winning on 2006-05-02 15:20 [#01891367]
Points: 27795 Status: Regular



u/l them to some internet space thing or other


 

offline Ceri JC from Jefferson City (United States) on 2006-05-02 15:26 [#01891374]
Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Followup to evolume: #01891357 | Show recordbag



My boss was actually speaking to me about this the other
day. He said he thought my emails/letters etc. were great as
they included everything you needed to know, as well as the
answers to the obvious questions people would ask upon
reading it. Basically he thought it sped things up no end,
as there was less of a "back and forth" exchange of emails
neccessary to get the whole picture, before you could start
working on things. I've become concious of the fact that
sometimes I do make it a bit too long, particularly for the
people who want to get a rough idea, without all the
technical stuff, so I've taken to making the first paragraph
a sort of abstract; cover the essentials there, then expand
on it below.

They've even cited my emails as useful documents after
things have been fixed, as they tend to have info all in one
place and they've even been used as knowledge base articles
and as the basis for procedural documents.

As you say, "thoughest".

I think it stems from my dislike of usual linear
conversations, where you can 90% of the time predict the
next person's response (in the case of close people, often
word for word) and have already prepared your response to
that, ad infinitum. It's almost as if I'd rather just cut to
the chase and just give them all the pertinent information
in one go.

I'm undecided if my style is a bit too long for MBs. Some
people seem to like it, but others, irritatingly for me,
seem to think it's too long and just skim read it and then
post something asking a question that I clearly answered in
the original text. I may well adopt the abstract first
paragraph method I do in business emails for my MB posts
too. H80rz, feel free to rip away. :P

I know it isn't always necessary, for example, instead of
this post, I could have just said:

true


 

offline Phobiazero from the next Xltronic (Sweden) on 2006-05-02 15:35 [#01891383]
Points: 10507 Status: Webmaster | Show recordbag



RAID5


 

offline evolume from seattle (United States) on 2006-05-02 15:36 [#01891386]
Points: 10965 Status: Regular | Followup to Ceri JC: #01891374



haha.

did you predict i'd say this:

"you wear purple pants."


 

offline xceque on 2006-05-02 15:36 [#01891387]
Points: 5888 Status: Moderator | Followup to Ceri JC: #01891374 | Show recordbag



It's a nice counterpoint to the typical teen/messageboard
game of answering important, urgent or complex questions
with as few words as possible. Roughly equivalent of the
vocal "ugh" so beloved of boys under 18.


 

offline xceque on 2006-05-02 15:36 [#01891388]
Points: 5888 Status: Moderator | Followup to Phobiazero: #01891383 | Show recordbag



Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.


 

offline J198 from Maastricht (Netherlands, The) on 2006-05-02 15:44 [#01891392]
Points: 7342 Status: Lurker | Followup to Ceri JC: #01891355 | Show recordbag



Well, something about your posts makes me read them
completely, even though i have absolutely no knowledge of
most of the subjects you discuss (mainly hardware stuff). A
thread like this will easily stay in my mind and warn me
from time to time that it's time to start backing up data.



 

offline Ceri JC from Jefferson City (United States) on 2006-05-02 16:44 [#01891424]
Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Followup to xceque: #01891387 | Show recordbag



Yes. I'm particularly fond of the "Ask three questions, get
one answer" approach favoured not only by teenage
messageboard posters, but also barely-literate colleagues
and salespeople. For example,

Email 1, from you to them:
"Hi person x,
I'm really interested in buying this from you/helping
you/otherwise benefiting you in some way. Before I go ahead,
I just wanted to check the following:
- What colour is it?
- If it's red, does it have green stripes?
- How many are there?
If you mail me back with the answers to these questions,
that'd be great and I'll get right on the case.
Cheers, Ceri."

Email 2 (them to you):

"Yeah sur. go rite ahead."

Email 3 (you to them):

"Hi,

Just wanted to clarift something; In your previous mail you
said yes. What is that refering to? Is that yes it's red?

Also, if you could give me the other info I asked for that'd
be great.

Ta,

Ceri"

Email 4 (Them to you):

"YES. As I said in my other email it's red. HTH,
irritating-pigshit-thick colleague."

*You bite your tongue and resist the temptation to point out
that, no they didn't say it was red.*

Email 5 (You to them):

"Hi, Thanks for letting me know re: the colour. Please could
you confirm whether or not it (they?) have green stripes and
how many of them there are? I can't really progress this
until I have this info. Thanks,

Ceri"

Email 6 (Them to you):

"Didn't you get my other mail? theyre red."

*bangs head on table*

...and so it goes on. You can number the points 1, 2 and 3,
but they still don't get the hint. I think it should be law
that is someone bullet points an email, the reply should use
the original email and you answer each one, in a different
coloured text after it.



 

offline Ceri JC from Jefferson City (United States) on 2006-05-02 16:45 [#01891425]
Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Followup to Phobiazero: #01891383 | Show recordbag



Phob: I use RAID in work, but I believe unless you want up
to the minute data coherency between the disks, it's not as
good as the overnight backup system I described (for a home
user like me). Reason being, Raid controllers can crash and
knacker both disks (I've seen it happen several times,
although admittedly it is rare).


 

offline xceque on 2006-05-02 16:53 [#01891430]
Points: 5888 Status: Moderator | Show recordbag



I've had that conversation before. My usual counter is to
reply to their feeble response with "thank you for your
informative reply" then copy the original email word for
word and send it again. The more usless replies I get the
more of the above words get enclosed in inverted commas in
my response.


 

offline evolume from seattle (United States) on 2006-05-02 22:46 [#01891603]
Points: 10965 Status: Regular | Followup to Ceri JC: #01891424



what you are probably dealing with is people who can't touch
type. when you can touch type, it is easy to rattle off a
huge ass email. but to a person that can't touch type, they
gotta keep looking at their fingers and if they have, like,
a lot of hangnails or warts or something they can't stand to
keep looking at their hands, then they make an error and
rather than use the mouse or arrows, they use the delete key
to go all the way back and fix the error.

but if you can touch type, you just hit the delete with your
pinkie and continue like nothing happened. i can touch
type, it's the only useful thing i learned in highschool i
rekkon. i'm always saying, "learning to touch type is the
most useful thing i learned in highschool." sure i learned
algebra and trig and calculus and such and sure i learned a
great deal about U.S. history and very little about world
history. but on the basis of the skills from highschool
that i use on an everyday basis, touch typing is the most
valuable. well maybe that and driving. i learned to drive
stick in highschool and that is definitely useful because my
car is a stick shift or "manual" as some people refer to
it.

so back to touch typing. it's great because it allows you
to really stream your thoughts as they arrive in your noggin
and at the same time spell check. well, of course that
requires that you actually know how to spell all the words
that come to your consciousness. perhaps this is another
thing that i retained from highschool. a vocabulary.
actually most of my vocabulary i probably picked up post
highschool because i probably only read like 15 novels
before the 9th grade and maybe 15 more during highschool.
but in college is was probably more like a novel a week. of
course my sentence structure could use a bit of work and
also my use of punctuation and capitalization. But you see,
my stream of consciousness knows no punctuation.

well i have a large glass of wine to drink and i have to
wash my wife's breast pump so i'll leave it at tha


 

offline 336515203 from high (Belgium) on 2006-05-04 07:52 [#01892369]
Points: 7 Status: Lurker



i know it's not helpful but :D love the thread :D just love
it - maybe cause uuurgh once again - no comment.

x_X


 

offline alphagamma on 2006-05-05 07:49 [#01893233]
Points: 2 Status: Lurker



Look for syncback on google.
And I don't see what the problem is with external
USB-drives.
I've never had any problem with my ICY BOX.


 


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