On 12/29/2014 11:06 PM, Bill wrote:
Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 10:33 PM, woodchucker wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying
that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and
steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.



FWIW IDrive will send you an externally HD for you to back up to and
to return to them. And visa versa should you need to restore every
thing.

You could also put a couple of DVDs in your safety deposit box, or
anywhere else that is not in the same building -- like in a secret
hiding place in your desk at work.
That was part of the "security manual" of the 70's. Don't store your
backup in the same building!


Absolutely and the "sensitive" data that I want to protect the most gets
handled differently. All the rest goes to the cloud for extremely easy
recovery should I do something stupid.

On 12/29/2014 11:02 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
On 12/29/2014 09:30 PM, Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 7:21 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
On 12/29/2014 06:12 PM, Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many
years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a
three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard
drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy
when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup
system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical
drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping
up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office
backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working
from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different
building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was
all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except
for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional
software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even
if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all
that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity
USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily
backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine
because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an
external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself.
I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot
but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups
I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to
make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)

I have several times unintentionally deleted a file. Fortunately, I
have always been able to recover it from a backup.

I use backuppc: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

Runs automatically every night on a linux server running RAID1 on two
2TB drives.


I just go to the windows waste basket if I actually want it back.

Never empty the waste basket?

Not before I recover the file. ;~) If I don't recover the file
immediately after I delete there is a good chance I meant to delete it.

I don't know about you but if I unintentionally delete a file I don't
wait to recover it. I'm not sure that I have ever deleted a file
without knowing it. I certainly have deleted the wrong one but I
immediately recover it.

That is just the way I do that, not necessarily the best for every body.

woodchucker wrote:
On 12/28/2014 11:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


2 minutes? Not in my book. It takes a from few minutes to a few hours
to get a delta. Never 2 minutes.


Jeff, I added a lot of files this week (probably at least 9GB, far more
than usual), and I just did the backup and timed it for you: 6 min. 50 sec.
Not as good as I said above, but far from a few hours. It typically
takes just a few minutes, I think.

If you don't have tons of files (like videos), SSD is not such a bad
deal. And if you have tons of videos, then they may live just fine on a
separate conventional drive.
All SSDs are not created equal. I've had good luck with Intel. It's my
understanding that to get excellent performance out of the lastest
drives, one needs
a motherboard with one of the more modern chipsets (like z97, not
z87). I'm no hardware guru, I've learned most of what I know from
Tomshardware.com

If you want to put windows on a new hard drive, you probably would need
to buy a Windows (OEM) disk for $100-140 too. So, depending on the age
of your system, it may make sense to build it into your next one. I
have 3 more parts to order before I can build my next one. Not including
external stuff (like mice), my new computer will be made from 11 parts.
It could have been done with 9. But clearly its not as complicated as
making something like lassagya (which I don't know how to do....) I
should remedy that!

Cheers,
Bill

Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:05 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Leon wrote:

FWIW all of your personal and confidential information is stored on
some type of cloud whether you initiated it or not. If you want
your personal information to remain private do not ever put it on
any computer connected to the internet or use a credit card, or use
a bank, or.....you get the idea. Just because you don't use the
cloud to store you data does not mean that some institution does
not store your personal data there.

True - but you are missing the point. While what you state is true,
there is no reason to recklessly throw everything else in your
private life out there. Do you really not understand the notion of
security Leon?


Perhaps you are being recklessly is saying something about my back up
procedure and know little to nothing about it.

Just because I use a method that works for me does not mean that I am
being reckless.

I take security very seriously but if you think your precautions will
be better than mine you might be more naive than you realize.

You might be taking yourself a bit too seriously if you believe that I
am being reckless with my data.

Ok - I'll take back the recklesss term. To each his own on the matter
though.

--

-Mike-

On 12/30/2014 4:55 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:05 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Leon wrote:

FWIW all of your personal and confidential information is stored on
some type of cloud whether you initiated it or not. If you want
your personal information to remain private do not ever put it on
any computer connected to the internet or use a credit card, or use
a bank, or.....you get the idea. Just because you don't use the
cloud to store you data does not mean that some institution does
not store your personal data there.

True - but you are missing the point. While what you state is true,
there is no reason to recklessly throw everything else in your
private life out there. Do you really not understand the notion of
security Leon?


Perhaps you are being recklessly is saying something about my back up
procedure and know little to nothing about it.

Just because I use a method that works for me does not mean that I am
being reckless.

I take security very seriously but if you think your precautions will
be better than mine you might be more naive than you realize.

You might be taking yourself a bit too seriously if you believe that I
am being reckless with my data.

Ok - I'll take back the recklesss term. To each his own on the matter
though.



;~) Exactly!

On 12/29/2014 11:31 PM, Bill wrote:
Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:05 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:12:09 -0600, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many
years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a
three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the
hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy
when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup
system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical
drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping
up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office
backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm
working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different
building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it
was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens,
except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional
software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble.
Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose
all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a
large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily
backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine
because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an
external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to
yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not
boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups
I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to
make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)
I've recovered many a deleted file with nothing beyond the built-in
windows undelete function.

Of course. ;~)

When I say lose, I mean seriously loose,
through no action of your own.

Seriousely, I don't loose files unless it is directly related to my
own carelessness. If I forget where I put the file, delete the file,
or loose it due to a crash, I consider that my fault.

I have seen applications (MS Visual Studio comes to mind) eat files
before, as in "its gone".


I can't say that I have ever lost a file unless I was not paying
attention to the assumed directory that the program wanted to save it in.

On 12/29/2014 11:36 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 22:38:45 -0600, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 9:05 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:12:09 -0600, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)
I've recovered many a deleted file with nothing beyond the built-in
windows undelete function.

Of course. ;~)

When I say lose, I mean seriously loose,
through no action of your own.

Seriousely, I don't loose files unless it is directly related to my own
carelessness. If I forget where I put the file, delete the file, or
loose it due to a crash, I consider that my fault.
And what do you call it when your hard drive crashes -- or loses a
few sectors. Not as common as it used to be, but it still happens. Or
when the hard drive totally gives up the ghost.

I call that my own fault for not taking precautions to have a back up of
those data files.


That is "seriously losing" a file "through no action of your own"
Sometimes the data recovery boys can get it back for a (fairly hefty)
price. Sometimes they are gone forever.

That is seriously losing a file through inaction of your own. ;!)

On 12/29/2014 11:28 PM, Bill wrote:
Doug Winterburn wrote:
On 12/29/2014 09:30 PM, Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 7:21 PM, Doug Winterburn wrote:
On 12/29/2014 06:12 PM, Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many
years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a
three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five
for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard
drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run
until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy
when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup
system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical
drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and
daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping
up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of
those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up
to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office
backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working
from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different
building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it
was
all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens,
except
for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional
software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even
if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all
that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity
USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily
backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even
know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine
because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an
external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't
put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to)
dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself.
I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not
boot
but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining
backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to
make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)

I have several times unintentionally deleted a file. Fortunately, I
have always been able to recover it from a backup.

I use backuppc: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

Runs automatically every night on a linux server running RAID1 on two
2TB drives.


I just go to the windows waste basket if I actually want it back.

Never empty the waste basket?

I run CCleaner almost once a day (love it)--download it from Sourceforge
(to avoid bloatware, etc.)

You can tell CCleaner to not touch the waste basket.

On 12/29/2014 11:06 AM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:45:38 -0500, clare wrote:

My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart.

You took the words right out of my mouth :-).

I regularly remove drives from my old computers before I junk them. It's
surprising how many people sell fairly new computers cheap. They take
out the drives to protect their data and assume nobody wants a computer
with no drives. I bought my last one for $10 and stuffed two of my old
drives in it.

But the industry has reached the point where IDE drives no longer work.
SO I'll have to junk my collection and start anew.


There are a couple of boxes here in my home office, way back in a
closet, that must contain 30+ hard drives from the past 25 years.

I have never disposed of a computer/server without keeping the hard
drive(s).


--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
https://www.google.com/+eWoodShop
https://plus.google.com/+KarlCaillouet/posts
http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

On 12/30/2014 11:46 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/30/2014 4:55 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:


Ok - I'll take back the recklesss term. To each his own on the matter
though.



;~) Exactly!

Being a belt and suspenders (plus an additional tacticool holster belt
g) kind of guy ...

.... I backup my work product files to OneDrive, iCloudDrive, Carbonite,
and a 1 TB external drive, using SyncToy (with the exception of
Carbonite) run nightly.

I also (other than financial information which I keep in an encrypted
folder fully knowing that security is relative) do not possess an
inflated sense of the importance of my "personal data" to the general
scheme of humanity, most of which is already a matter of public record.

After all, there is no data on a computer _regardless of its location_
which can be read legally, that cannot be read illegally.

So **** you, NSA...

--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
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KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

Swingman wrote:


After all, there is no data on a computer _regardless of its location_
which can be read legally, that cannot be read illegally.


Very true, but that is not the real issue. The guys that snoop around for
things tend to do that on the platforms such as cloud based repositories,
rather than going out to every single IP address out there. It seems people
are not very aware of the amount of (new) hacking of cloud based storage.
It's more a matter of making it harder, or less attractive than it is a
matter of completely eliminating the threat. Put it in the cloud and I
assure you - you will be compromised - sooner rather than later.

--

-Mike-

On 12/30/2014 1:16 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Swingman wrote:


After all, there is no data on a computer _regardless of its location_
which can be read legally, that cannot be read illegally.


Very true, but that is not the real issue. The guys that snoop around for
things tend to do that on the platforms such as cloud based repositories,
rather than going out to every single IP address out there. It seems people
are not very aware of the amount of (new) hacking of cloud based storage.
It's more a matter of making it harder, or less attractive than it is a
matter of completely eliminating the threat. Put it in the cloud and I
assure you - you will be compromised - sooner rather than later.


That last sentence is most likely true. But the cloud is going to
compromise my information after the State Controllers Retirement office
and Citicards did. They both provided identity theft protection as a
result. So if the lurkers look on the cloud at my pictures, music, and
drawings..... Oh well. Think about what cookies are capable of sharing...

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 22:06:52 -0500, "Mike Marlow"
wrote:

wrote:


Just because someone stores your information somewhere in the "cloud"
doesn't mean you should compound the problem by volunteering to store
more on another server with unknown/suspect security. Maybe you want
to post your SSN & DOB here? ;-)

Huh? Sorry, but that just does not make any sense at all Maybe you want
to take another pass at that...

Because something exists doesn't mean more of it is better.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:33:46 -0500, woodchucker
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.

Stop complaining. My upload is normally 80K (~1.5M down).

On 12/30/2014 1:16 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Swingman wrote:


After all, there is no data on a computer _regardless of its location_
which can be read legally, that cannot be read illegally.


Very true, but that is not the real issue.

That is indeed, the absolute, unarguable, irrevocable "real" issue.

Part and parcel with the absolute, unarguable, irrevocable FACT that
security is and always be, RELATIVE.

IOW, just like the lock on your front door, find your RELATIVE comfort
level with regard to security, and live with it...

--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
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http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

"Bill" wrote:

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external
hard drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be
lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about
$70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him,
at least.
-----------------------------------------------------
I've had a 1GB external HD collecting dust for at least a year waiting
for me to spring for the software I want to run it.

A little late, but better late than never is where I'm at now.

I still run a lot of DOS based programs and am able to insert an copy
command line in the file that copies everything in the directory to a
2GB flash drive plugged into front of case.

It's the important stuff but does not include e-mail files.

Lew

Lew Hodgett wrote:
"Bill" wrote:

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external
hard drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be
lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about
$70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him,
at least.
-----------------------------------------------------
I've had a 1GB external HD collecting dust for at least a year waiting
for me to spring for the software I want to run it.

I haven't looked, but you might check whether SourceForge.org has
some (free) software which would you may find usable.
It's my "most-trusted" source.


A little late, but better late than never is where I'm at now.

I still run a lot of DOS based programs and am able to insert an copy
command line in the file that copies everything in the directory to a
2GB flash drive plugged into front of case.

It's the important stuff but does not include e-mail files.

Lew

I wrote:

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.
------------------------------------

wrote:

That depends how you have the power settings in windows set. You can
power the drive down after a set time of not being accessed, as
well
as shutting off the monitor, and even powering down the processor,
or
hibernate it.

------------------------------------------------
It's been so long I forgot how I had set it up but it is as follows:

Turn off monitor after 30 minutes.

Turn off hard drive after 30 minutes.

System Standby after 1 hour.

System hybernate after 2 hours.


Lew

On Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:04:04 -0600, Swingman wrote:

There are a couple of boxes here in my home office, way back in a
closet,
that must contain 30+ hard drives from the past 25 years.

I have never disposed of a computer/server without keeping the hard
drive(s).

Well, all the new computers are using SATA drives. So while our IDE and
EIDE drives aren't quite useless yet, it won't be long until they are :-)

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.

We use two externals for backup. About a year ago we bought a Western Digital Passport that backs up data as you create or update it. It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking. We bought the drive at Sam's for around $65 and it seems like a great investment.

Second level of backup is in our safe deposit box a few blocks from here. It is an older Seagate unit; and we bring it home every 4-6 weeks and back up everything. That is our 'tornado/house burns down' protection.

RonB

On 1/1/2015 12:43 PM, RonB wrote:

It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking.

I like to do that myself, with both budget files for jobs (particularly
those shared on DropBox), and with various versions of drawings and
Sketchup Files as they evolve.

This thread made me think about picking another usb 1TB, as the old one
is going on 5 years old.

Going to look for a WD model that comes with that particular software.

Thanks for the heads-up ...

--
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Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
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http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

On Thursday, January 1, 2015 1:08:15 PM UTC-6, Swingman wrote:
On 1/1/2015 12:43 PM, RonB wrote:

It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking.

I like to do that myself, with both budget files for jobs (particularly
those shared on DropBox), and with various versions of drawings and
Sketchup Files as they evolve.

This thread made me think about picking another usb 1TB, as the old one
is going on 5 years old.

Going to look for a WD model that comes with that particular software.

Thanks for the heads-up ...

--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
https://www.google.com/+eWoodShop
https://plus.google.com/+KarlCaillouet/posts
http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

The drive here on my desktop is a Western Digital P/N WDBBEP0010BBK-01. As I think about it, we have had it a bit more than one year. Probably bought at Sam's Club in mid 2013. I checked reviews on it while we were in the store and folks who owned it seemed pleased.

RonB