The Vent and Rant Thread

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Why does everyone insist on external hard drives or storage web sites? I back up all my ebooks on a flashdrive that I keep in a safe location. Of course, my husband backs up all our computers (we have 8 at the moment) on the 2TB external hard drive, but I would really like to know why no one mentions the flash drives. Is there something inherently wrong with them that would make them a poor choice?

I don't use them as my main back up media for several reasons:

• Capacity
• Price compared to capacity
• The fact they have a limited number of write/erase cycles compared to a traditional hdd (a problem with all solid state drives)
• And I've seen far more of these fail than I have hard drives (admittedly, the ones I've seen fail have all been cheap no-brand ones - I frequently (*) have to tell people at work (or more often consultants, clients etc they've brought in) that we probably can't get back the sole copy of their important (**) report from their very dead flash drive.
• Physical size - they're ideal for carrying around documents and programs I might need, but I don't want my back up device to be something I can easily knock onto the floor and run over with my chair.

I do use them as a tertiary back up for some files though (after external hdd and the cloud)

(* Not quite as frequently as telling people that it is very, very unlikely(***) we can recover an important and urgent report they've spent all morning working on, but haven't saved even once.)

(** Although it usually transpires that it's not important enough for them to consider buying software or paying one of the companies that do data recovery on the off chance they may get something back.)

(*** Sometimes Word's autorecovery or inability to consistently delete .tmp files gets some of it back)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

I don't use them as my main back up media for several reasons:
<...>
[*]The fact they have a limited number of write/erase cycles compared to a traditional hdd (a problem with all solid state drives)

I don't consider that a huge problem. The write/erase limit is around 100,000 operations, and the controller circuitry transparently maps failing cells so they don't get used. You'll see graceful degradation if you see anything at all, and you are likely to replace the drive with a higher capacity model long before the limit will come close to biting you.

But yes, you do get what you pay for. There are about four companies that manufacture the actual flash media (Hitachi, Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba), and everyone buys media from them and puts it in their own packaging under their own name.

I did benchmarks on same SD cards used in my PDA, and had one card where the benchmark took so long I thought the device had hung and was about to reset it. Nope. It turned out that all other values were in line with the other cards, but writes were an order of magnitude slower. The benchmark test was trying to write a 1MB file to the drive, and taking a long time to do it.

It was a PNY card using Toshiba media, and a correspondent on another forum reported similar experience with a Kingston card that also used Toshiba media. Slow writes weren't a deal breaker in my usage, as files would be put on the card with a USB reader, and only read by the PDA. Read speeds were acceptable.

It did cement my resolve to buy brand names, even at slightly higher costs, to have media I could be confident would work.
______
Dennis

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by kazbates

@ DGma ~ The same thing happened to me with one of my first laptops. We were able to retrieve most of the data off of the damaged hard drive, but I lost one of the best recipes for pound cake that I've ever made. It was given to me by a woman who had experimented with the recipe for years before she got it "just right". I still moan about that loss every time I start to make a pound cake.

Good luck with the search, Kaz.
Most recipes for Pound cake in the UK are very similar: the original versions called for a pound weight of all the ingredients. These days, we mostly make half-pound cakes: 8 oz of butter, sugar, flour, and 8 oz weight of eggs (approximately 4 eggs), with the option of 8 oz dried fruits.

(Or 6 oz of everything and 3 eggs, etc.)

I still occasionally use a version from an old English cookery book that says to weigh the eggs and add equal amounts of the other ingredients.

[nomesque]

GAH! Just growled at someone on their own blog, and wondering if I'm too easily irritated. Does anyone else find this blog post pretentious?

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by nomesque

GAH! Just growled at someone on their own blog, and wondering if I'm too easily irritated. Does anyone else find this blog post pretentious?

It does seem unnecessarily prescriptive. Also a bit boastful - sort of, I can write and you guys can't - at least not according to my definition.
And he can't spell "researcher" (in the headline) either.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Patricia

It does seem unnecessarily prescriptive. Also a bit boastful - sort of, I can write and you guys can't - at least not according to my definition.
And he can't spell "researcher" (in the headline) either.

Yes, I decided to ignore that, but it gave me a giggle I'm glad I'm not the only one getting that impression. Think I'll unsubscribe - I too frequently get irritated more than helped by their posts on writing. And I have better things to do than writing grumpy comments.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by nomesque

GAH! Just growled at someone on their own blog, and wondering if I'm too easily irritated. Does anyone else find this blog post pretentious?

I didn't see it the same way you did nomesque. What I do see first is a descriptive about how writing has been transformed in order to be a job or career. I'm sure this writer has pestered at first the same way you and I do at what commercialism has made of a form of art. He seems to have bitten the bullet and climbed the rungs of the ladder the prescribed way industry advocates. Now where I do get off is that after he did do the deed, he worships the process as the only way to go. :rudenoise:

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Same here sort of. I use time machine for local backups to an external drive. I also use dropbox which contains most of my documents and stuff. In addition to syncing with 3 PCs it also keeps stuff in the "cloud". So at least all that data is in 4 places.

DG - There is something you might consider. Dropbox will "backup" your ebook collection for you. It is free up to 2GB of data.

I do plan to get Crash Plan set up in January.

Thanks, pb, I just joined last night.

BOb

Thanks, pb, I just joined last night. Looks like a neat thing.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't consider that a huge problem. The write/erase limit is around 100,000 operations, and the controller circuitry transparently maps failing cells so they don't get used. You'll see graceful degradation if you see anything at all, and you are likely to replace the drive with a higher capacity model long before the limit will come close to biting you.

I never said it was a sensible reason

[desertgrandma]

So much good advice, and such helpful suggestions.

Not one "You big dummy!! You KNEW better!!" Believe me, I did know better.

If my experience prompts just one person to begin backing up, it will have been worth it.

Thanks everyone. I've opened a different thread to continue the discussion. This time, I'm listening.......I promise.

[dreams]

Originally Posted by nomesque

GAH! Just growled at someone on their own blog, and wondering if I'm too easily irritated. Does anyone else find this blog post pretentious?

Originally Posted by Patricia

It does seem unnecessarily prescriptive. Also a bit boastful - sort of, I can write and you guys can't - at least not according to my definition.
And he can't spell "researcher" (in the headline) either.

Reseracher's

Huh? You mean you don't "speel" it like that?

From the blog post:

More often, I sit back and consider the differences between successful writers and those who haven’t yet reached published status. I need to clarify something here. When I say “published,” what I mean is legitimately published by a real publishing house that actually offers money and then pays it (albeit in many cases later than they should.). In an era of fly by night small presses, vanity presses, et al, I feel the need to make that clarification.

I think I would take exception to that statement, if I was a self published writer. Naomi, you did start and end with a positive comment in your reply post.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Ouch! The poor thing. My niece's little Yorkie just came into heat for the first time and she bought the cutest little "diaper" for it. Of course, I think the dog weighs all of 4 pounds.

Attachment 41146

back when I had multiple dogs and was breeding and so on I would put a pair of boxers backwards on the bitches with a sanitary pad in it. looked funny, they didn't always think about their clothing when peeing, but it was effective. she can't go into a kennel environment (it's an "open" kennel everyone gets to play and hang out together) because of her smell

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Why not use flash drives? Well, it depends on what you have to back up. For instance, my master ebook library is in c:\eBooks. That directory tree is currently at 19GB. I don't have any flash drives big enough to handle that.

Backing up to the web presents similar challenges. I currently have not quite a terabyte of storage, spread across half a dozen physical drives in my desktop. I could make incremental backups to the web (IE: stuff that has changed since last backup), but getting the initial backup on the cloud would be time consuming...


My SO stilll uses an old MS-DOS program called Meal Master. It was written by a programmer whose wife wanted a recipe database. IT worked well enough to become quite popular, and current Windows based products mostly still have an option to import recipes in the transfer format Meal Master used. I'll have to see what we might have in pound cake recipes.
______
Dennis

is the general consensus that flash drives are the way to go? I just bought a scanner to take to my folks to go through old photographs. I was thinking about sending out disks, but should it be the drives?

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

So much good advice, and such helpful suggestions.

Not one "You big dummy!! You KNEW better!!" Believe me, I did know better.

If my experience prompts just one person to begin backing up, it will have been worth it.

Thanks everyone. I've opened a different thread to continue the discussion. This time, I'm listening.......I promise.

did you save your stuff?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Not one "You big dummy!! You KNEW better!!" Believe me, I did know better.

Nope... probably more people saying... gee, I hope that doesn't happen to me... I really should set up some kind of backup too.

I've got to tell you, most people don't back-up until after the have had some type of data loss. After that they are very careful to have a back up / recovery plan and preach it all the time.

I know I had been lucky so far. But, the Mac makes it so easy, just hook up an external drive and turn on Time Machine... now I've got to do that extra step, sign up for Crash Plan and get it all off site... I'm sure my two college kids would be happy to know there stuff is backed up too.... Lossing college work musn't be fun.

BTW: You said you signed up to try it, did you mean dropbox or crash plan?

BOb

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

BTW: You said you signed up to try it, did you mean dropbox or crash plan?

BOb

I signed up for dropbox. At first, I wasn't sure of it, but so far its doing exactly what I need it to do........share files with someone else without emailing....and a huge plus, it also backs up whatever files I have transferred there.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

I signed up for dropbox. At first, I wasn't sure of it, but so far its doing exactly what I need it to do........share files with someone else without emailing....and a huge plus, it also backs up whatever files I have transferred there.

Yep, it is pretty awesome and seamless. If you hook another PC up to it every thing will stay in sync... if you add/change/delete from one machine, that will be copied to the other(s). Bonus, previous versions are retained as are files you delete if you need to recover them.

Major bonus, it works across Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

BOb