Kinda strange, well not really it makes logical sense. Where I work I got 16 warehouses that are located around the country, and I get to build them 'make shift servers' so to speak and ship them across the states, well we have been in our hardware upgrade cycles, and something I have noticed is after all the flooding etc.. etc.. that took place in Asian earlier this year, we have got a ton of bad hard drives from newegg. Litterly I build a server send it to them, and they will experience HD failures with in 72 hrs of the machine being up and I have to rebuild them a new one. ( this isnt to bad of a processes because I have a master drive I just ghost installations off and make minor changes to configs for the most part now ). I would say in the past 4 months we gone though 12 drives.
Here is your answer:
$30K for a Million Years of Storage
The solution to that problem may lie in a $30,000 hard disk, made of an indestructible combination of sapphire and platinum that claims to be durable enough to last for up to one million years. It was designed by a diverse team of scientists, anthropologists, archeologists, artists, archivists and linguists who worked to build something that would last, but could also be understood by people thousands of years from now.
This hard disk is different from the type of external hard drive that you would save your documents and music on, and not just because of how long it lasts and expensive it is. Unlike a digital hard drive that codes data in a series of zeroes and ones, this hard drive is build to contain tiny images that is read like a microscope, sort of like futuristic microfilm.
When I purchased my new 2Tbyte hard drive, my Taiwanese friends started joking that they hoped I didn't buy a Thai hard drive. Now I understand why. I guess I'll have to open the box and take a close look at it.
I'd go to a solid-state hard drive if I could -- wonderfully fast booting. But they have a shorter useful life and more complex data management than the 'traditional' spinner. I wonder what the CIA is using.
Don I learned this "hard lesson" a few years back. I know this doesn't do you any good for recovering your data but..... Now days I save a copy image of the system drive on another internal hard drive, on a USB3 external drive, and important stuff like pictures etc. also in the cloud. Since I started doing that again I had a system drive failure, but this time all I had to do is copy my saved image to a new hard drive and I was immediatley back in business.
The program I use to do this is the free version of Macrium Reflect which lets you create a CD boot disk to do restoration of failed drives to new ones using all currently attached drives to search for saved images.
I periodically use a program called Retrospect to back up full drives and or partitions. It does full or incremental backups.
On an almost daily basis I use a free program called SyncExp to backup critical folders and files that change frequently. This is a nice little program!
I periodically use a program called Retrospect to back up full drives and or partitions. It does full or incremental backups.
On an almost daily basis I use a free program called SyncExp to backup critical folders and files that change frequently. This is a nice little program!
I use this at work.. It current backs up around 200 clients and about 10 servers, works like a charm, we have had it write backups to tape drives, USB Flash drives, Hard drives... you name it..
Its really an amazing peace of software, but On to the bad
THE THING IS A PITA to configure ( at least for what we do with it )
I use this at work.. It current backs up around 200 clients and about 10 servers, works like a charm, we have had it write backups to tape drives, USB Flash drives, Hard drives... you name it..
Its really an amazing peace of software, but On to the bad
THE THING IS A PITA to configure ( at least for what we do with it )
Yeah - it's not exactly intuitive or user friendly but it's saved my butt several times. It restores a partition and the registry, does a little procedure after rebooting and you're ready to go!
The bigger question that looms in my mind is this: Who in h3!! needs 2 TB of storage? And why risk vital data to drives that pack it so densely? I haven't come close to filling even a 120 GB drive.
The bigger question that looms in my mind is this: Who in h3!! needs 2 TB of storage? And why risk vital data to drives that pack it so densely? I haven't come close to filling even a 120 GB drive.
People who need 2 TB HDD's need to invest in a backup system or do a Raid 5 with swappable HDD's..
Or consider migrating off to storage, data that isn't used much to keep current storage requirements reasonable instead of insane.
Either is a lot cheaper than using a recovery service that may not get your data off. but these solutions do require a bit of self-discipline and planning. Most users aren't into that.
@Phil
Nobody needs 2Tbytes, but I did need something for backup - more than 500Gbytes, less that 1Tbyte. That extra 1Tbyte was just so cheap. I am backing up 3 machines via LAN with complete disk images of dual boot Linux and Windows plus additional BU of /home in LInux.
Putting BU on a USB drive seems rather absurd as hard drives don't like being moved and jarred. Plus the computer is suppose to monitor status and might warn early of failure.
I have over 4 TB of storage. Why? Backups. I've had several drives fail in the last 15 years or so, each time they took valuable data with them that I had no back up for. What takes up the most space is video, followed by music. I don't have a DVD player hooked up to my TV, just a computer. I have near instant access to over 250 movies (most at 480 p or better), nearly 100 documentarys, and a whole lot of Television shows (like Battlestar Galactica and every episode of the original Star Trek series). I have about 100 GBs of music in both mp3 and lossless flac format. And I have backups of it all.
Stuff that I personally created doesn't really take up much space, currently that folder is about 10 GB (which in reality has a lot of extraneous stuff, like my collection of downloaded pdf data sheets). The only thing I haven't got is some type of off-site back up, just my personal stuff and photographs on a couple of 8 GB flash drives stashed out in the truck. My 3 main drives are 2 x 1 TB WD Black, and 1 x 2 TB WD Green. All were bought prior to the flooding in Thailand at a total cost of about $270.
My iTunes library is about 100GB, my movies are closing in on the1TB mark...
(350GB is Anime... )
Sure, I could rip it all again, but it took me a couple of months to rip all the DVDs(not really finished.)
And some of the Podcasts archived in iTunes can no longer be downloaded.(Or you now have to buy from iTMS)
My iTunes library is about 100GB, my movies are closing in on the1TB mark...
(350GB is Anime... )
Sure, I could rip it all again, but it took me a couple of months to rip all the DVDs(not really finished.)
And some of the Podcasts archived in iTunes can no longer be downloaded.(Or you now have to buy from iTMS)
Any one who uses Un compressed HD files for video editing knows how HUGE they are.
you REALLY want to know . try 100 MB a second for some top notch Video .
600 MB a min 36 GB a hour Lets say I roll 3 1H chunks. that is easy 100 GB ..........
And that is the raw imports now add on top the render files and scratch-pad and there goes a HDD.
As for sound I use AIFFs or WAVs ......... * barfs * I hate compressed files ... I mean really .. I pay for classical and Darnint I want to Feeeeell the flutes and there harmonics . . none of this band pass junk .
Funny I use 2 canon 1d's and I dont ever shoot raw .....
I use JPEGs and I use no compression . ( the 1 D can do this as a setting ) this way I have compatibility and close to no loss.
Saving your favorite TV series with a DVR will gobble up 1TB pretty quickly. Meanwhile, converting transport stream files to AVI is just more wear and tear on the hard drives.
BTW, SiliconDust makes an outstanding DVR. Highly recommended.
A basic backup system for those AVphiles with monster storage reqs would be swappable HDD's. They are simple to install and use.
The rest of us don't need such a system. A simple solution is a 8 GB memory stick for critical files. The OS and applications can easily be reloaded via DVD's/CDROM's so there is no need to back them up. Backing up a entire HDD image is only useful when ghosting additional drives or you have something so custom that it would take a week to rebuild from source material.
Still I remember just a decade back when the storage capacities kids waste today on tv shows and music would be enough for two AF flight test programs and still have capacity left over. Needs certainly have changed.
. Backing up a entire HDD image is only useful when ghosting additional drives or you have something so custom that it would take a week to rebuild from source material.
.
Meh I do it as I am SO OCD on my system . I am very much set in my ways ..
apple spoils me ! Time machine really does a very good job making stuff look like a crash never happend.
Only My Serials I have to re-enter ( fair enough ) . also makes migration a snap..
Other *NIX based systems can do it too. Mind apple made the GUI fool proof . DD on the other hand ...... Yea is playing with fire and a ROOT shell.
Comments
$30K for a Million Years of Storage
The solution to that problem may lie in a $30,000 hard disk, made of an indestructible combination of sapphire and platinum that claims to be durable enough to last for up to one million years. It was designed by a diverse team of scientists, anthropologists, archeologists, artists, archivists and linguists who worked to build something that would last, but could also be understood by people thousands of years from now.
This hard disk is different from the type of external hard drive that you would save your documents and music on, and not just because of how long it lasts and expensive it is. Unlike a digital hard drive that codes data in a series of zeroes and ones, this hard drive is build to contain tiny images that is read like a microscope, sort of like futuristic microfilm.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/30k-million-years-storage-134154367.html
I'd go to a solid-state hard drive if I could -- wonderfully fast booting. But they have a shorter useful life and more complex data management than the 'traditional' spinner. I wonder what the CIA is using.
The program I use to do this is the free version of Macrium Reflect which lets you create a CD boot disk to do restoration of failed drives to new ones using all currently attached drives to search for saved images.
On an almost daily basis I use a free program called SyncExp to backup critical folders and files that change frequently. This is a nice little program!
Anyway, I just got my new machine at work, and they have it set up with a RAID mirror across two 1TB drives from different manufacturers. Very smart.
I use this at work.. It current backs up around 200 clients and about 10 servers, works like a charm, we have had it write backups to tape drives, USB Flash drives, Hard drives... you name it..
Its really an amazing peace of software, but On to the bad
THE THING IS A PITA to configure ( at least for what we do with it )
Yeah - it's not exactly intuitive or user friendly but it's saved my butt several times. It restores a partition and the registry, does a little procedure after rebooting and you're ready to go!
-Phil
Easy. Anyone who takes lots of photos or video.
Or consider migrating off to storage, data that isn't used much to keep current storage requirements reasonable instead of insane.
Either is a lot cheaper than using a recovery service that may not get your data off. but these solutions do require a bit of self-discipline and planning. Most users aren't into that.
Nobody needs 2Tbytes, but I did need something for backup - more than 500Gbytes, less that 1Tbyte. That extra 1Tbyte was just so cheap. I am backing up 3 machines via LAN with complete disk images of dual boot Linux and Windows plus additional BU of /home in LInux.
Putting BU on a USB drive seems rather absurd as hard drives don't like being moved and jarred. Plus the computer is suppose to monitor status and might warn early of failure.
Stuff that I personally created doesn't really take up much space, currently that folder is about 10 GB (which in reality has a lot of extraneous stuff, like my collection of downloaded pdf data sheets). The only thing I haven't got is some type of off-site back up, just my personal stuff and photographs on a couple of 8 GB flash drives stashed out in the truck. My 3 main drives are 2 x 1 TB WD Black, and 1 x 2 TB WD Green. All were bought prior to the flooding in Thailand at a total cost of about $270.
(350GB is Anime... )
Sure, I could rip it all again, but it took me a couple of months to rip all the DVDs(not really finished.)
And some of the Podcasts archived in iTunes can no longer be downloaded.(Or you now have to buy from iTMS)
(350GB is Anime... )
Sure, I could rip it all again, but it took me a couple of months to rip all the DVDs(not really finished.)
And some of the Podcasts archived in iTunes can no longer be downloaded.(Or you now have to buy from iTMS)
Any one who uses Un compressed HD files for video editing knows how HUGE they are.
you REALLY want to know . try 100 MB a second for some top notch Video .
600 MB a min 36 GB a hour Lets say I roll 3 1H chunks. that is easy 100 GB ..........
And that is the raw imports now add on top the render files and scratch-pad and there goes a HDD.
As for sound I use AIFFs or WAVs ......... * barfs * I hate compressed files ... I mean really .. I pay for classical and Darnint I want to Feeeeell the flutes and there harmonics . . none of this band pass junk .
Funny I use 2 canon 1d's and I dont ever shoot raw .....
I use JPEGs and I use no compression . ( the 1 D can do this as a setting ) this way I have compatibility and close to no loss.
BTW, SiliconDust makes an outstanding DVR. Highly recommended.
The rest of us don't need such a system. A simple solution is a 8 GB memory stick for critical files. The OS and applications can easily be reloaded via DVD's/CDROM's so there is no need to back them up. Backing up a entire HDD image is only useful when ghosting additional drives or you have something so custom that it would take a week to rebuild from source material.
Still I remember just a decade back when the storage capacities kids waste today on tv shows and music would be enough for two AF flight test programs and still have capacity left over. Needs certainly have changed.
Meh I do it as I am SO OCD on my system . I am very much set in my ways ..
apple spoils me ! Time machine really does a very good job making stuff look like a crash never happend.
Only My Serials I have to re-enter ( fair enough ) . also makes migration a snap..
Other *NIX based systems can do it too. Mind apple made the GUI fool proof . DD on the other hand ...... Yea is playing with fire and a ROOT shell.