don't forget...:(

[Invasion]

Just a quick reminder guys PLEASE don't forget to backup your pictures as soon as you can ....I just lost all the pictures I have taken with my G3 since I had it :( the only ones I have left is the ones I printed ...so big lesson learned this end make sure it doesnt happen to you guys...!

Regards

[marie]

sorry about what happened you

you don't say how exactly you lost them ?
just a computer crash ?
well its never 'just', didnt mean that to sound so.......
...'just'

I have not got a re writer ,
have to use floppies and lately the floppies won't copy some of my photos at all.
not sure why

thanks
marie

[Invasion]

marie wrote:
sorry about what happened you

you don't say how exactly you lost them ?
just a computer crash ?
well its never 'just', didnt mean that to sound so.......
...'just'

I have not got a re writer ,
have to use floppies and lately the floppies won't copy some of my photos at all.
not sure why

thanks
marie

Well I lost the pictures due to a hard drive failure the thing just died on me :( it was working just fine then when I next went to start nothing .....not sure why it went out ???
Anyway got me a new one now reinstalled everything and now I download my pics to Cd-R as well as hard drive and just to be extra safe a make another copy on Cd-R :) .
Sorry to hear you are haveing trouble hope you get it fixed soon

regards

[havg3]

That sucks. It happened to me, too, with some photos but particularly with video that I shot with my digicam during my daughter's birthday celebration down in Wildwood. I had put a lot of work into it...weeded out garbage, added music, cool transitions, credits, and even speeded up a swim contest which looked really cool and before I had a chance to render it because the raw data would not fit on a CD, my system crashed. I was heartbroken. Thankfully, I still had the raw data on tape but I never tried doing it again (which I will one day when I'm over it). So now, not only do I back up everything I can on CDs but I also purchased an external hard drive and keep back up copies of work-in- progress stuff on that.

[NILOLIGIST]

Invasion,

Backing up is fine, but what you can also do is use another hard drive and put your photos there. Using the hard drive with the Operating System on it is asking for trouble. I have two hard drives and my machine crashes sometimes but I haven't lost any data yet. On the second hard drive you just store files, many people I know in technology do this and it works well.

Smile,

[lasercomp]

niloligist wrote:
Invasion,

Backing up is fine, but what you can also do is use another hard drive and put your photos there. Using the hard drive with the Operating System on it is asking for trouble. I have two hard drives and my machine crashes sometimes but I haven't lost any data yet. On the second hard drive you just store files, many people I know in technology do this and it works well.

Smile,


Nilo, I do the same thing as you described but double. I have 2 physical hard drives on my pc. I have an 80GB and a 15GB. Partitioned the 80GB into 60GB and 20GB and put all my data and photos on the 20GB partition and also copy everything from my 20GB partition to my extra 15GB hard drive weekly. By doing this, it is almost impossible to lose any data. I also backup my photos to CD-R just in case of a catastrophe.

[NILOLIGIST]

lasercomp,

I have 195 Gigs, 2-80Gigs, 1-20Gig and 1-15Gig, using 2 machines. So far we are all doing just fine. It is the ony way to go.

The reason most machines crash is because you installed so many things, remove things and this causes fragmenting on your hard drive most times over a period of time. Results, drive is full of junk and or needs to be formatted. I use a small drive for my OS=Operating System and I use a larger drive for my files. It has worked for years. Burning is good but spare drive works better for me.

:D

[lasercomp]

niloligist wrote:
lasercomp,

I have 195 Gigs, 2-80Gigs, 1-20Gig and 1-15Gig, using 2 machines. So far we are all doing just fine. It is the ony way to go.

The reason most machines crash is because you installed so many things, remove things and this causes fragmenting on your hard drive most times over a period of time. Results, drive is full of junk and or needs to be formatted. I use a small drive for my OS=Operating System and I use a larger drive for my files. It has worked for years. Burning is good but spare drive works better for me.

:D

One possible problem that can be with having extra drives and keeping identical data on both drives is the hideous word called "VIRUS". If you get a bad enough virus, it can cause havoc on all drives on one system. I've heard stories of viruses wiping out machines connected to a router whereas people share their internet connection with a cable modem. My final assurance of knowing my data is safe is backing up to CD-R's.

[NILOLIGIST]

lasercomp,

I don't keep identical data on the drives, I only store data on the second drive. Also, virus protection MUST be kept up to date. Getting a virus is not bad, it is not being able to get rid of it that is bad. I download a lot and I get viruses all the time, so that doesn't worry me, if I can't remove them, then I am concerned.

I am getting a card reader that has DVD software that allows you to burn cd's of your photos and play them through your DVD player. I am going to back up my data to CD's too.

Smirk-Wink,

[Excavator]

I'm not posting this to say "I told you so"...but rather to make a point and maybe get other people to plan ahead a little.

I back up to a second drive on this machine and to another machine on my LAN. So all important files are copied on 3 seperate hard drives - I have a synchronization utilty that keeps all copies current.

I also back up, although not as frequently, on extra space on my brothers computer several miles away. I've set aside a couple gigabytes of space for him on this machine and he's made room for me on his machine. That way, in case the worst might happen (like a house fire), my files would still survive.
Most ISP's provide free webspace you could back up important things to. It's not much, I get 10 megabytes free, but it's enough to back up your banking and personal files. If you wanted more for photos, space is not that expensive. Of course they're servers are not any more secure than your drives at home - anyones computer can crash.

This is all better than CD-R because it's easier to update and much faster. To back up all my data and photo albums takes over 20 gig ... I'd hate to spend the time to burn that many CDs!! Even using the DVD burner would take too much time.

[dgoodfellow]

It is a good idea to store your backups off site too. I burn a copy of all my babies photos I've taken during the week and give them to my parents. Serves a double purpose. They get to benefit from having the high res images to print as they wish, and if my house were to burn down, our precious baby pictures of our childs first year wont be lost.

[iesrick]

I agree with your suggestions. I have done System support and been the manager of IT systems for a long time and double drives doesn't give very good data integrity if you only keep the data on one drive. Hard drives do give up and die....it is just a matter of when they will. Putting duplicate data directories onto two different drives in the machine will help a bit if one of the drives should go. I prefer the plan where one of you said, where there is a duplicate directory on both drives AND you burn a cd. It is all dependent on how important certain data is to you. It is not at all far fetched to have a power surge that damages both drives and all cards in the system. I have seen it happen to servers and stand alone PCs and workstations and I had to do the recoveries. Virus problems or power surges are things that happen despite our best efforts with antivirus software and surge suppressors and power grooming UPS equipment. I can only say that for the data and image files that I really value, it is a small amount of effort to regularly duplicate the data directory and burn a cdrw to the latest level of data update. I have seen too many machines fail due to circumstances beyond my control. It is just a matter of how much value an individual places on certain data and what effort it is worth to protect it....and what understanding or lack thereof that a person has of computer hardware, because the all hard drives have a MTBF (mean time between failure) so the darned thing is going to fail and they have tested to find the averages....I just don't like to gamble with averages so I burn cds as backup.

[marie]

Well I lost the pictures due to a hard drive failure the thing just died on me :( it was working just fine then when I next went to start nothing .....not sure why it went out ???
Anyway got me a new one now reinstalled everything and now I download my pics to Cd-R as well as hard drive and just to be extra safe a make another copy on Cd-R :) .
Sorry to hear you are haveing trouble hope you get it fixed soon

regards
[/quote]


thanks for this reply invasion.
just wanted to know exactly what happened you as... forewarned is forearmed.

got great information here altogether from all
thanks
enjoyable post

glad all is going well for you again
my floppies are fine again.
don't know what exactly happened, but I got zoombrower installed ok ( on the canon camera) last week and thought maybe that affected something somewhere else,
as it did before, had awful trouble with scanner and cam etc etc
but all is fine now
thank you
marie


sorry, but this post is going 'funny' when I try to post it ) :

[marie]

Well I lost the pictures due to a hard drive failure the thing just died on me :( it was working just fine then when I next went to start nothing .....not sure why it went out ???
Anyway got me a new one now reinstalled everything and now I download my pics to Cd-R as well as hard drive and just to be extra safe a make another copy on Cd-R :) .
Sorry to hear you are haveing trouble hope you get it fixed soon

regards
[/quote]


thanks for this reply invasion.
just wanted to know exactly what happened you as... forewarned is forearmed.

got great information here altogether from all
thanks
enjoyable post

glad all is going well for you again
my floppies are fine again.
don't know what exactly happened, but I got zoombrower installed ok ( on the canon camera) last week and thought maybe that affected something somewhere else,
as it did before, had awful trouble with scanner and cam etc etc
but all is fine now
thank you
marie


sorry, but this post is going 'funny' when I try to post it ) :

[Dougery]

Laser, that's a good way to go. I too use a slave drive to store all data. I run all programs off my master. Computer wont get bogged down and your data is a little more secure!

[marie]

dougery
do you mind if I put reply to invasion here
as my reply to him is not coming up at all
sorry all this messing about is happening
thanks
marie


my reply to invasion which I am trying to post >


>> thanks for your reply invasion.
just wanted to know exactly what happened you
as... forewarned is forearmed.

got great information here altogether from all
thanks
enjoyable post

glad all is going well for you again
my floppies are fine again.
don't know what exactly happened, but I got zoombrower installed ok ( on the canon camera) last week and thought maybe that affected something somewhere else,
as it did before, had awful trouble with scanner and cam etc etc
but all is fine now
thank you
marie


sorry, but this post is going 'funny' when I try to post it ) :
later again >>>
not half
its six time I have tried to post this now

thanks dougery for the space.
hope this gets there ok now

later
yes it did. thank goodness !
I was nearly going bananas
I couldn't get a reply in here...... anywhich way
so I posted my 'reply' on the end of dougerys post lucky for me that he came in just then
the other way didn't work at all, for some reason
(see all the 'black ' ??)
sorry about that
spoiling your nice posh g3's post
: )))))))

very enjoyable post...black and all as it is now
: )))))

[Invasion]

Marie Gald to hear your problem is solved with the floppies :)

Thanks everyone for your replies...... I think I will get a secondary drive like suggested and just use it for my pictures, then with my Cd-r backups as well I should never loose anything again ....I hope :)

Regards

[DigPic]

Some of these lessons in life are such a pain!!!!