Made the local paper, slightly misquoted!

[FlyingPete]

Got a call from one of our management types on Monday to talk to a reporter about storage trends (my key area in my day job), got quoted in the paper for it!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10007060

That is pretty cool!

[tpinchback]

Cool, I got into the paper too, see picture.
http://www.uh.edu/campus/cougar/Todays/Issue/sports/sports1.html

[tim]

Nice one Pete.

I agree re CDs, I don't entirely trust them. I keep all my data on my hard drive, on my portable laptop drive, and on DVD backed up offsite. Ideally I should keep the portable hard drive off site too, at work, maybe, if I can keep it somewhere safe. I think the chances of me losing data are slim right now.

[FlyingPete]

Cool, I got into the paper too, see picture.
http://www.uh.edu/campus/cougar/Todays/Issue/sports/sports1.html

Cool, you got a picture in, I tried that a week ago, got a shot of a twister forming in suburban Pakuranga (unheard of, and until then an unrecorded event), they didn't deem it news worthy!

[tim]

How do you contact the paper Pete? I've emailed newspaper editors a couple of times and they don't even bother to reply.

[FlyingPete]

Nice one Pete.

I agree re CDs, I don't entirely trust them. I keep all my data on my hard drive, on my portable laptop drive, and on DVD backed up offsite. Ideally I should keep the portable hard drive off site too, at work, maybe, if I can keep it somewhere safe. I think the chances of me losing data are slim right now.

Thanks!

Yep, CD's are dodgy, I was saved a couple of times by keeping multiple copies of everything, they were Imation disks as well (the light green ones, the dark blue ones seem better), so not cheapies. Not sure about DVD reliablity, I have heard that they are better. I have a removable ATA drive that I update monthly and keep here at work, cost $50 for the caddy and bay, plus used an older 60GB drive I had lying around. Works nicely!

[FlyingPete]

How do you contact the paper Pete? I've emailed newspaper editors a couple of times and they don't even bother to reply.

The company that I am a consultant for - Axon is often contacted for information or quotes by a couple reporters from the Herald, it was just in this case I was given as a contact to talk to by our 2ic (apprarnly I am the company's storage subject matter expert) - all comments to the press from staff members have to be cleared by him first.

When I sent them my twister shot last week, I never heard anything back, that has been my general experience when I contacted tham, rather than the other way around.

[Bodryn]

Flying Pete, as a former storm-chaser I find it exceeding strange that a news outlet would take no interest in a tornado wannabe when there is no record of such there. I can't help but think that if you emailed that photo to some news outlet in the midwest U.S., they'd really sit up and take notice: (Everybody in the US thinks tornadoes don't occur anywhere else!) But of course if all those news guys out there aren't publishing these photos, no wonder there's no record of them there! Maybe you have to approach some meteorologist with a PhD first, just to make the case. Or show some old saltwater sailor; they've probably seen a waterspout before. I've had much better response from local TV stations (Midwest US)

[Bodryn]

Re: CDs - I read somewhere that the Library of Congress was in a long-term project putting old rare books onto CDs so they could archive them for the distant future. Starts to sound like another expensive boondoggle. :(

[Moppie]

a twister forming in suburban Pakuranga
:eek: I remember the photo, but you didn't say where it was. Im in Highland park, just up the hill, and close enough to have seen it.


An interesting article to, its nice to be published, and given a little recognition, remember to add it to your C.V. :)
Iv now had two photos published in the Aucklander, and Iv quotes about cars published in a book under my username (which was a nickname before I ever went online).


How long do you see Tape based back ups being the main form of recovery data storage? I work for a company which deals in all forms of printed and electronic Data managment, and we have quite a lot of business relating to off site Tape storage.

[FlyingPete]

:eek: I remember the photo, but you didn't say where it was. Im in Highland park, just up the hill, and close enough to have seen it. .

Hmmm, maybe, it was looking south from our place (Pak Heights - behind Tinytown) I guess it was over Ti Rakau/Edgewater area.

I read your location was Hobbiton, so I thought you meant Matamata!

How long do you see Tape based back ups being the main form of recovery data storage? I work for a company which deals in all forms of printed and electronic Data managment, and we have quite a lot of business relating to off site Tape storage.

For backups to be truly protected they need to be offsite and unattached to system, the only thing that fulfils that requirement is removable technologies such as tape (optical works as well, but capacity wise is cost prohibitive when you compare against 200GB tapes such as LTO2). I also say to send it to a storage company, don't just ship them to another office, they are unlikely to have the facilities to store them safely.

My previous employer went to considerable cost to replicate all their data in real time between sites, the only issue there was and deletion or corruption was also replicated in real time!

If the backup storage device is not attached to the system (i.e. offsite), it cannot be damaged by user error, worms, viruses or other nasties, online tape based backups are all vulnerable to these elements.

Anyway say you find out that you deleted something 18 months ago, and you need it back, you would need a hell of a lot of disk space to store to store a typical full backup cycle of 2 years plus!

90% of restores in my experience are from the last couple of weeks, if you can have that online and available you will save considerable time when restoring data, this is where disk based backup excels. It can also help with backup windows, backup everything to disk overnight, then stage to tape at the systems leisure the next day.

I could keep going, but as you can see tape is a long way from being dead (despite what some say!). Your compaines key buisiness is still safe for some time to come if I have anything to say about it :)