back up yer data...repeat

[monkeybrainz]

IT CAN HAPPEN! :eek:
baaahahahahahahaa - insane laughter ensues....

i'm kicking myself in the pants as best i can while i write this. i just got back from backpacking europe & seeing many of your awesome countries for a few months. got home and fired up the pc's to find that i lost everything.

my webhost never renewed my domain, so that expired and they deleted my account so all the stuff i had on the web is gone. no prob i thought, i'll just restore it when i get home....

my main pc has a primary HD failure its other drives are making funny burning smells....

my backup machine w/ countless gigs of mp3s and mirror images of the main computer's drives is a paperweight now (lightning storm appearently)

i usually backed my stuff up meticulously until the last few months of school & work claimed my soul entirely but i guess i was living as according to fellow actionscripter Rupert_Freeman's footer.

well i feel better now having shared my dissaster :rolleyes: with everyone. i've purchased heavy duty UPS's and now it's time to make a fresh start. :p

[Artie Effem]

That sucks. I thought I had it bad when lightning cooked my modem and ram two weeks ago *gazes at shiny new modem sitting in front of him* You lost everything!

[pinkaboo]

:(

How was your trip though?
Did you manage to score any work over this side of the Atlantic or was it all fun, fun, fun?

pinK

[monkeybrainz]

heya pinK,

well i meant to look 4 some work ;) but it turned into a whirlwind adventure of a lifetime! went something like this:
london -> dover -> callie, france -> paris -> san sabastian, spain -> lisbon, portugual -> sintra -> albufera -> lagos -> faro -> madrid, spain -> barcelona -> nice, france -> paris (again), uh amsterdamn?, netherlands -> prague, chzech republic (floods) -> vienna, austria -> innbruck -> zurich, switzerland -> interlaken -> hamburg, germany -> coopenhagen ,denmark (christiana!) -> stockholm, sweden -> turg, finland -> helsinki -> tallinn, estonia - > london -> iceland -> home.

well something like that i probably forgot a few countries. i know now that i could never just live in one place for the rest of my life there is just too much to see. it was my original intent but i don't think i ever actually openned a newspaper to look for a job :D ..... i'll just have to search from here

i'm gonna post all our party pics eventually on my site when i get the $ to develope all the 100's of pics we shot if anyone wants to see some cool places

[pinkaboo]

cor blimey guv'nor! That sure was some trip!

*jealous*

How long were you gone for?

You don't seem to have been absent long enough for all those jaunts.

so, care to tell me what's wrong with Manchester? ;)
About the only city you didn't gallivant around it seems!
Too rainy and miserable for you?
Didn't fancy our whippets and flat caps? (not to mention our barms?!)

:D

heh, glad you had an amazing adventure!

pinK

[monkeybrainz]

i've been out n about since july and we rarely stayed in 1 place for too long (funny though i can't seem to remember how long we were in amsterdamn...) i'm sure manchester has lots to see (when you can see throught the rain :p ) but i tells ya ENGLAND IS EXPENSIVE! we high-tailed it out of there in about 4 days.

(first experience in london: stayed in a district called rotherhithe, i think, and met some chaps ina bar. one guy asks 'so what do you do?' i tell em computer programmer, he says 'what a coincidence - i steal computers for a living, yep i'm professional thief!' he and his dodgy friends had been in the big house over a dozen times. then proceeded to whip out some funny smelling cigarrettes right in the bar. i asked him why weren't there any people in the streets around this area, he told me it's cuz this area has about the highest murder/crime rate in london! -we got the hell out there!)

whippets / flat caps / barms? i missed so much! ;)

[vilehelm]

I agree, backup is good.

ALSO

I went on a short vacation a couple of weeks back and when I left I disconnected EVERYTHING I own that includes the TV, DVD STEREO etc... As well as the computers. All surge supressors, cable lines, phone lines etc...We're prone to major electrical storms here so it's always a concern. I have it down to a science where everything can be unplugged and shut off in about a minute.

[sfa]

Sorry to hear about your problems, at least you had a great trip. Backing-up is something I always worry about but never do anything, what do you reckon is the best method for doing backups?

SFA

[monkeybrainz]

the best methods i've read about or tried seem to be large format and not residing on the computer you are backing up. pc magazine constantly does roundup reviews of diff methods. there are quite a number of backup programs available to automatically take care of it for you whether it be on tape, DVD, another HD or CD's.

with tapes you can set the prog to backup as often as you like and can hold from around 40G (uncomp) - 160G (compressed). like a portable HD you can take this with you on vacation or lock it in a fireproof vault (if your data is that valuable or UR just paranoid ;) )

DVD's don't hold as much yet, but still have enough capacity to hold quite a bit of data

portable HD's, or backing up your drive across a LAN can be a simple and effective solution. a great safety precaution would be to set up a RAID array, level 1, so you'd always had another drive with your info.

CD's can be a pain, i know 'cause that's what i usually end up doing. 80G's of HD = lots of CDs. of course you don't have to backup everything, just the newest material can be burned and that can be automatically determined by software progs. windows even comes with a backup program of its own.

i've been backing up across a LAN with a mirror image of my drives which makes recovery incredibly easy, but of course you have remember the basics like GETTING A REAL SURGE PROTECTOR (smacks self in the forehead :rolleyes: ).

hope this gives you some ideas - mb