I'm one of those guys who should know better, but can still manage to mess stuff up anyway, despite my best efforts (i.e. my best isn't good enough). I generally believe in the adage that if you don't have your important files backed up in three places, you don't have your important files. Most of my files are saved on a couple of computers and I have a couple of larger (8TB) portable drives that I use to keep a tertiary backup at my family's farm, which is a good 12 hour drive away. Whenever I visit I bring one drive and swap it out with the one that is already there.
Thing is I cannot afford to back up ALL of my files because I have my entire video collection on a home server....I will be fixing that soon, but not soon enough to save all of my 3d printing files. I had a lot of .stl's on a portable drive and I-kid-you-not as I went to pick it up to make a copy of everything on my home server I knocked it off of the table. Now the drive doesn't work.....
"Luckily" a good chunk of my files are available to download again from DriveThruRPG and MyMiniFactory, but most of the stuff I had picked up on Patreon over the years...... *POOF*. Anything that was actually conveniently organized........*POOF*.
I'm probably 30 hours into downloading what I can......and once it's organized I'm thinking that I need to burn these to some M-Discs.
Now all of my "regular" RPG files are at least thrice back-up, but please....take my pain-in-the-ass (it's actually a little sore as I'm taking a break from downloading and organizing a bazillion files.....to type this) as a mental note for you to back your files up. Have at least three copies and one off-site.
I don't know what the cost might be, but the data on your damaged drive might be recoverable.
ReplyDeleteI looked into it....and part if the reason I was just rocking the portable HDD for, well too long, was because the info was 95% available online, just a PITA to get back down. You know like if you are going to hide a spare key on your car you put it someplace where you have to get real dirty, possibly bloody, and swear a lot. I'm at the swearing stage......the 5% I'm going to lose is from Patreons that I'm no longer part of and I suspect some of that I could get back if I re-sign for one more month.
Delete3 books. That's all any gamer needs. I know it would be cool or helpful to have more, but every once in a while we need to remind ourselves that 3 books is enough. Everything else is gravy. Just 3...
ReplyDeleteThe PDF copies of my books I have in 3+ places......but on several levels I agree.
DeleteSome of notes.
ReplyDeleteI recommend the Ultimate Boot CD for lots of different utilities for spinning rust hard drives. I have used it a few times in the past for recovering (most) data from crashed hard drives. I usually had to attempt multiple different utilities to do so.
The plastic of the discs you're linking to is good for a bunch of years, but remember the manufacturer only warranties them for 10 years. Don't make that your only backup copy, and make sure to refresh them every 5 years.
When I worked for {tape drive manufacturer} I used to say that there were two kinds of hard drives: Ones that have failed, and ones that are going to fail. When a hard drive fails, you are often able to recover at least some of the data. When a solid state drive (SSD or flash drive) fails, it's usually completely unrecoverable without soldering replacement chips onto it. So multiple storage locations, on multiple types of media is warranted.
May you have fair winds, and following seas.