Reinforced a learned lesson today

[haertig]

Thank the Lord for good backups!

Today, my fingers refused to move as intended when using the mouse. I was viewing photographs on my computer, an activity that would normally be totally harmless to my Calibre library. However, when trying to click on a photo directory to open it, somehow I managed to drag-n-drop an adjacent Calibre directory and accidentally started some unknown and unplanned for copy/move/delete file operation (???) I could see a massive number of my Calibre files scrolling by under some operation that I don't know what it was (Was it drag-n-drop? Right button double-click? Who knows what I did!) This apparently queued up a zillion file operations, so I couldn't just cancel one thing - I tried that and then the next operation in queue started up. I quickly killed all my Linux user processes to try and mitigate the damage (it was too late - after only a few seconds you are already screwed).

Oh heck, this was going to be one gigantic mess!

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but ultimately there were no ill effects to my Calibre library of thousands of books - because I had good backups (saved to remote servers). A simple restore-from-backup of all my Calibre directories and libraries fixed everything. I have automated nightly snapshot backups to multiple remote servers, with 365 daily snapshots saved, so I lost absolutely nothing.

So if anybody here is NOT currently doing backups, please start doing them. I am not a computer novice - I've been a system administrator and application programmer for decades. Even someone super familiar with computers can sneeze when using the mouse and royally hose things up. This is one of the reasons I don't like GUI's all that much. Yes, they are helpful and convenient - but sometimes TOO convenient when you do something by accident.

Backup your files everyone! It saved me today. It could save you tomorrow.

[gldnbrwncouches]

As a fellow Linux user, I also keep multiple snapshots around for backups. It's something I've done for many years now, but have very rarely needed it. Still, it's times like these that reinforce the necessity of such a small thing. Here's the line that I think everyone should take home, computer expert or novice:

Originally Posted by haertig

Backup your files everyone! It saved me today. It could save you tomorrow.

Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, etc, EVERYONE should backup their important data in some reliable way! I would definitely want my Calibre/ebook library preserved. Accidents are just that, accidents, and can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Better to have it and not need it, rather than need it and not have it in this case.

[Nausicaa]

Do you use btrfs for snapshots?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by gldnbrwncouches

Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, etc, EVERYONE should backup their important data in some reliable way! I would definitely want my Calibre/ebook library preserved. Accidents are just that, accidents, and can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Better to have it and not need it, rather than need it and not have it in this case.

Agreed. Only a couple of weeks ago my youngest cat, who's blind, jumped on my network drive and crashed with it to the floor. The cat was fine, but the drive was totally busted. I had my movie and TV series collection on that drive, among other things. Luckily I had backups on other external drives, so nothing was lost. But it could have easily been, only in a second it took the cat to jump.

[DiapDealer]

I've handled this age old issue in a different way: by not having any data I would cry over if it disappeared tomorrow.

I kid ... but I don't. I stopped falling in love with "stuff" a long time ago. I'm as much a minimalist digitally as I am physically.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I've handled this age old issue in a different way: by not having any data I would cry over if it disappeared tomorrow.

I kid ... but I don't. I stopped falling in love with "stuff" a long time ago. I'm as much a minimalist digitally as I am physically.

Well, people are different. I've always been a hoarder, even as a small child. The stuff I hoard has changed with time, but the tendency itself hasn't. I also suffer from a mild agoraphobia and any kind of minimalism, digital or physical, just gives me the creeps. It's incomprehensible to me.

[BookCat]

Minimalism: there's nothing to it!

Hoarding: now where did I put . . . ?

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Nausicaa

Do you use btrfs for snapshots?

I use backup software named UrBackup (free, open source). I have it backing up several Linux systems and Windows systems. It uses LVM snapshots on the Linux systems configured with LVM (which is most of them). On the hard partitioned Linux systems, the backups are done from live filesystems, but the data is static. I use plain old ext4 - I've just never felt terribly compelled to use btrfs, reiserfs, jfs, xfs, or any of the other more exotic filesystem types - I've experimented with them some, but never implemented them on anything but temporary test filesystems. UrBackup stores all these backups on a remote server using an rsync-plus-hard-link strategy to create daily snapshots.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by haertig

I use backup software named UrBackup (free, open source). I have it backing up several Linux systems and Windows systems. It uses LVM snapshots on the Linux systems configured with LVM (which is most of them). On the hard partitioned Linux systems, the backups are done from live filesystems, but the data is static. I use plain old ext4 - I've just never felt terribly compelled to use btrfs, reiserfs, jfs, xfs, or any of the other more exotic filesystem types - I've experimented with them some, but never implemented them on anything but temporary test filesystems. UrBackup stores all these backups on a remote server using an rsync-plus-hard-link strategy to create daily snapshots.

Sounds interesting. I might have to give it a look.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by crich70

Sounds interesting. I might have to give it a look.

Here is an earlier post I did where I mention (slightly) more about UrBackup:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...54&postcount=4

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I've handled this age old issue in a different way: by not having any data I would cry over if it disappeared tomorrow.

I kid ... but I don't. I stopped falling in love with "stuff" a long time ago. I'm as much a minimalist digitally as I am physically.

I must confess that I don't get the idea that one should not have anything they care about enough that it bothers them to lose it. Well different strokes I guess.

My solution is that I use a Drobo raid drive to handle hardware issues and back my important directories to a second drobo raid drive as well as dropbox for off site backup. I remember hearing a photographer say on a podcast that nothing was safe until you had 3 copies, one of which was off site. Of course, he was a professional photographer, but the idea translates well enough. It does help to have software where one can set up an automatic backup.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I must confess that I don't get the idea that one should not have anything they care about enough that it bothers them to lose it. Well different strokes I guess.

All depends on ones ideas of "have", and "loss." I don't have digital collections of books, music, pictures, or videos to back up. So what's left? Everything I value can be quickly (and cheaply) reinstalled/recreated. The things I care most about can't really be digitally "lost." Passwords and instructions are the main exception to that; and a couple of thumbdrives and/or an occasional printout takes care of those.

I didn't take extensive measures to safeguard against the loss of my physical collections of pictures, music or videos before digital replaced them; so I see little point in going out of my way to do it for digital versions of them.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I didn't take extensive measures to safeguard against the loss of my physical collections of pictures, music or videos before digital replaced them; so I see little point in going out of my way to do it for digital versions of them.

The thing is, it is difficult to take redundant and effective measures to protect your physical collection of family photos. However, it is trivially easy to do so with your digital collection. That is one reason why I spent the money to buy a slide/negative scanner to get high quality scans of important, but old, family photos.

Do I ever pull out my old honeymoon slides to project them these days? No. Does my slide projector even work anymore? Probably not, it would be a miracle for its lamp to still be working after all these years. And an even bigger miracle for me to be able to find a replacement lamp. Will my digital copies degrade over time like the original slide/negative versions will? No.

So I recommend using the advantages of digital storage as a REASON to do better backups of your important stuff. I do not recommend using "the old way" as an EXCUSE not to backup. But to each his/her own. We all place different importance on different things.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by haertig

So I recommend using the advantages of digital storage as a REASON to do better backups of your important stuff. I do not recommend using "the old way" as an EXCUSE not to backup. But to each his/her own. We all place different importance on different things.

Yes. We do at that. And I can assure you that if any of the digital photographs on my machines were important to me, I would back up them up. But the attic full of dusty boxes full of thousands of rotting photographs that I've never visited once in decades has taught me that perhaps my definition of "important" needed to change. Things (real or virtual) are only important to me if I use them on a regular basis.

[Sirtel]

I guess the back-up issue depends also on whether you re-consume your digital media or are more of a use-once-and-discard type. I like to reread, rewatch and so on. Therefore not losing my collections is important for me. I wouldn't want to lose the photos of my dear deceased kitties either, or my hand-edited wallpaper collections, which I've enjoyed using on several successive computers and tablets.