OT Giving Thanks

11/17/07, 12:58 PM #1

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret
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OT Giving Thanks

Stephen Shepherd in the State of Deseret

>About a year ago I got a new laptop, my old computer was full and had problems, none of the ports or devices worked so I could not get any files from the hard drive.

I took it to a friend who does web sites for big companies and he offered to get the data off my old drive. After several months went by he called me and said he couldn't get anything off the drive. I was in shock and for the past several months I have been thinking that all was lost. I had an older copy of the Hide Glue book on zip disk but other files including my old web site were still on the drive.

A couple of days ago I recieved a call, my friend said that they had bought an adapter and had copied all of my drive onto a disk. Hoorah! I now have it all including the Hide Glue Book, the Screw Book, the North American Indian Woodworking Book, the Shellac Book and others all preserved.

If you have important files, back them up, I didn't and this past year was a nightmare thinking of those lost files.

For this I am Thankful.

Stephen

Re: OT Giving Thanks

11/17/07, 6:10 PM #2

Dean Lapinel
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Re: OT Giving Thanks

Dean Lapinel

>I know the feeling and I'm glad you recovered all.

Re: OT Giving Thanks

11/17/07, 10:10 PM #3

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco
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Re: OT There are two types of users

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>Those who have lost data. And those who will.

I started early on. When I cleaned out part of the shed recently, I tossed data tapes from the mid-1980's. I've tossed the 8" disks from earlier, too. And the 5 1/4 disks are pretty much toast.

We wrote the important stuff to CD, and hope that those stay in production long enough for the last few years. The family pictures are spread out to the grandkids, printed and CDs. And names and dates are attached. Trying to find out who some of those old folks are was a chore.

But you are certainly fortunate, Stephen. Each of our systems, with big new hard drives, has a directory marked ARCHIVE, and various previous systems data files stashed safely there.

Perhaps those books deserve a paper copy?

Re: OT Giving Thanks

11/18/07, 12:49 AM #4

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)
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Re: OT Giving Thanks

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Hi Stephen

You have a good friend.

Making, then maintaining and updating backups of all important data seems to be part of the housekeeping of computers that is no different to cleaning and organizing a workshop.

In the "old days" - about 15 years ago only - the size of a PC harddrive was miniscule. I recall my first PC was a 286 with 1 Mg of RAM. I then "souped" it up to 2 Mg of RAM. And it ran Windows 3.0 ... ah, the good old days. There was not much room to store data, and so time was spent spring cleaning and storing data on floppy disks.

These days the harddrives are so large that this urgency is no longer there. I suspect that we have got lethargic, only to be galvanized every few years when the laptop is upgraded. The problem is that files are now large and even CDs are not going to hold enough. I have kept an old laptop just to use as storage. But now that can't keep up. Anyway, it is tedious and so I procrastinate.

I have so much that I hold for reference. I take and keep at hand a great number of images (since in this increasingly visual world, this is a great way of explaining and demonstrating finer points). Image files take up a large amount of space.

One of the reasons I use a off-computer, web-based site like Photobucket is so that I have a backup (of course it essential as well if you want to post multiple images). My most recent purchase - just last week - was a external harddrive that is designed to be a backup. This takes seconds to update records (the entire harddrive in one hit). While the capacity is huge by my thinking - 250 Gb - it is actually at the lower end of what is available.

I shall now have to exert even more self-control to maintain a reasonably (!) clean harddrive on my laptop.

Regards from Perth

Derek

OT Giving Thanks

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