I just spoke with Cynthia about the gallery. More on that in my next email but my talk with her reminded me of a thread that developed here a while back about archiving files. Coincidentally, just today I received a post from the International Occultation Timing Association's listserve referring to an online article about the subject. See it here: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10235132?IADID=A0 While I routinely back up data files on my Macs (and store those backups in 2 and sometimes 3 places) I've only recently started giving serious thought to backing up stuff on the old Windows box I had to get to run the Paramount. After reading the above I'm giving it even more thought but the article has me a bit spooked. And so I turn to the computer whizzes here on UA for opinions. With drives becoming so cheap I _was_ going to just get an external hard drive to back up to and continue to back up to DVDs. But the article refers to hard drives crashing and DVDs becoming unrecoverable. Over the years I've accumulated a veritable museum of Macs going back to my first (a MacPlus) from 1984. They all still work fine (though, admittedly, I only turn on the oldest one every now and then just to see if it still works). Even the Windows box I bought from Super Dell in '99 still works (albeit maybe a bit slowly) and it gets used many hours every week. So, my questions to the computer gurus on the groups are: Is the article being overly pessimistic or have I just been lucky? And, what do you do to protect files you plan on keeping for a very long time? Your thoughts? Many thanks, patrick the paranoid p.s. The above has nothing to do with the problems discussed in the previous UA thread about new machines not being able to read files created on old machines.
Patrick, I have Microsoft Word documents that I created in 1984, which haven't been damaged. I back up my stuff on an external drive and haven't had any trouble. I also have backed up many things on CDs and they seem OK (I couldn't read one CD but maybe I had erased it). The big problem with that is I have multiple copies of things on CD and it's crazy to have so many disks around. I suspect hard drives are good. Thanks, Joe PS: The only trouble with my oldest files is that Word has changed so much over the decades that I can't get the stuff to come up with all the correct formatting, when I use the latest version of Word. But I have an old copy of Word that reads them fine. --- On Sat, 9/13/08, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Backing up files To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 9:27 PM I just spoke with Cynthia about the gallery. More on that in my next email but my talk with her reminded me of a thread that developed here a while back about archiving files. Coincidentally, just today I received a post from the International Occultation Timing Association's listserve referring to an online article about the subject. See it here: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10235132?IADID=A0 While I routinely back up data files on my Macs (and store those backups in 2 and sometimes 3 places) I've only recently started giving serious thought to backing up stuff on the old Windows box I had to get to run the Paramount. After reading the above I'm giving it even more thought but the article has me a bit spooked. And so I turn to the computer whizzes here on UA for opinions. With drives becoming so cheap I _was_ going to just get an external hard drive to back up to and continue to back up to DVDs. But the article refers to hard drives crashing and DVDs becoming unrecoverable. Over the years I've accumulated a veritable museum of Macs going back to my first (a MacPlus) from 1984. They all still work fine (though, admittedly, I only turn on the oldest one every now and then just to see if it still works). Even the Windows box I bought from Super Dell in '99 still works (albeit maybe a bit slowly) and it gets used many hours every week. So, my questions to the computer gurus on the groups are: Is the article being overly pessimistic or have I just been lucky? And, what do you do to protect files you plan on keeping for a very long time? Your thoughts? Many thanks, patrick the paranoid p.s. The above has nothing to do with the problems discussed in the previous UA thread about new machines not being able to read files created on old machines. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com
I doubt I qualify as an "expert", but I just spent some time looking into this for work and for home, so.... Yes, there are problems with most forms of backups, but, in the real world, if the hard drive on your computer, your on-site backup, and your off-site backup, all fail on the same day, then we have either just had a nuclear attack, or your luck is so bad that you can safely assume the gods do not like you and you are DOA, no matter what... So, rationally, you may want to consider an automatic on-site mirrored back up system such as Drobo http://www.drobo.com/ along with a portable or web based off-site backup. or, for the Macs running Leopard, a secondary hard drive attached to your machine with automatic backups using "time machine". (I know windows can do something similar, but I don't deal with them as much anymore, so...) If you use an external laptop hard drive (they are designed to take more abuse than the full size hard drives) for the automatic on-site backups, and if you buy two of them, you can switch them out once a week, and store the one you are not using off-site. This gives you redundancy and off-site storage. You can get the Western Digital "My Passport Essential" which is an external laptop hard drive, or you can buy a hard drive and enclosure separately from a place like Newegg, and put it together yourself, depending on how computer savvy you are feeling. You can do DVD's, but it seems to take a lot of them for one computer, and then you want to make sure you have two sets, in two different locations, and that you don't forget to backup specific files. In general, I like mirrored drives, such as the drobo, because then you are not as subject to changes in software, and you can switch out bigger drives as your needs increase. However, that does not do anything for off-site storage, and just using two external drives, alternating weeks, with timed backups, is a lot easier for the home user (like me). Jo
Just keep in mind that all media has a shelf life. If you create backup CD's and DVD's, you would be wise to keep more than one copy, and "refresh" them every few years (copy them back to your current hard drive, check data for integrity, and re-burn new copies). As for old versions of Word or Wordperfect (or Wordstar if you're as old as I am), there are conversion utilities out there (google helps here!). It's a good idea for docs that you want to preserve to pull them into the latest versions from time to time and update the formatting, etc. so you don't leave them "stranded" as the years pass. My $.02. /Rich --- On Sat, 9/13/08, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Backing up files To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 9:27 PM I just spoke with Cynthia about the gallery. More on that in my next email but my talk with her reminded me of a thread that developed here a while back about archiving files.
Coincidentally, just today I received a post from the International Occultation Timing Association's listserve referring to an online article about the subject. See it here:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10235132?IADID=A0
While I routinely back up data files on my Macs (and store those backups in 2 and sometimes 3 places) I've only recently started giving serious thought to backing up stuff on the old Windows box I had to get to run the Paramount. After reading the above I'm giving it even more thought but the article has me a bit spooked.
And so I turn to the computer whizzes here on UA for opinions.
With drives becoming so cheap I _was_ going to just get an external hard drive to back up to and continue to back up to DVDs. But the article refers to hard drives crashing and DVDs becoming unrecoverable.
Over the years I've accumulated a veritable museum of Macs going back to my first (a MacPlus) from 1984. They all still work fine (though, admittedly, I only turn on the oldest one every now and then just to see if it still works).
Even the Windows box I bought from Super Dell in '99 still works (albeit maybe a bit slowly) and it gets used many hours every week.
So, my questions to the computer gurus on the groups are: Is the article being overly pessimistic or have I just been lucky? And, what do you do to protect files you plan on keeping for a very long time?
Your thoughts?
Many thanks,
patrick the paranoid
p.s. The above has nothing to do with the problems discussed in the previous UA thread about new machines not being able to read files created on old machines.
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participants (4)
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Joe Bauman -
Josephine Grahn -
Patrick Wiggins -
Richard Tenney