Aura I AM PEVEED! Maybe some one can help me.....

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Katie1

And when my PC Crashes do Any one of you wish to PAY for replacement e-books....

Katie, I back all my ebooks up to Google Drive and I don't store them on my PC.

Right now, if my PC crashes, I still have my books on my portable hard drive. If the portable hard drive fizzles, I have my books backed up to a different external hard drive.

And if my house burns down and I lose all my drives and my reader, I still have them backed up to Google Drive. So when I get my replacements, I can fire up Calibre and be back in business.

Also, if you buy books from Amazon and aren't downloading them to your PC, how are they appearing on your Kobo? If you are downloading them to your PC, then what harm will Calibre cause? Seems to me you are better off having copies of books on both your PC and on your reader/SD card.

[ZodWallop]

Aside from us all wagging our fingers, have you gotten your Kobo back into shape?

[JSWolf]

You buy an external hard drive. Then you can backup your Calibre settings and your Calibre library no problem. A good program such as FreeFileSync for Windows. It will help keep your backup updated.

[meeera]

Backups: rolling hourly backups onto two external drives, rolling backups to the cloud, and intermittent backups of bits and pieces (including Calibre library) to a USB stick.

Yes, I'm pretty confident that if my computer crashes, I'll be fine. In fact I have recovered in the past from at least two hard drive failures over the years. Takes an hour or three to copy everything back over to the new drive/computer from Time Machine, but it's a set and forget process.

Everyone who owns a computer will have it die eventually. Everyone should have a backup strategy.

And when I buy a new Kobo, it's a very simple matter of telling Calibre to load it up. Nothing to re-create.

[petercreasey]

My fear is a fire.

A friend of mine had his house burn down and lost everything.

I have everything backed up on hard drives, but don't store anything off premises.

A fire would be devastating.

On the other hand, storing things in "the cloud" is risky...despite what security vendors might say.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

My fear is a fire.

A friend of mine had his house burn down and lost everything.

I have everything backed up on hard drives, but don't store anything off premises.

A fire would be devastating.

On the other hand, storing things in "the cloud" is risky...despite what security vendors might say.

Sure - if you refuse to do any variety of cloud for offsite backup, you could do a weekly complete backup to a portable external hard drive which you lodge at work or a close friend's house or a local locker (gym, library, etc). This is what I used to do before the cloud was a thing.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

I have everything backed up on hard drives, but don't store anything off premises.

A fire would be devastating.

On the other hand, storing things in "the cloud" is risky...despite what security vendors might say.

But it doesn't have to be either/or. Why not both?

Then if your house burns down at the same time that Google somehow loses all data, you will know that the universe is angry with you about something.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

My fear is a fire.

A friend of mine had his house burn down and lost everything.

I have everything backed up on hard drives, but don't store anything off premises.

A fire would be devastating.

On the other hand, storing things in "the cloud" is risky...despite what security vendors might say.

One of my brothers is a professional photographer, so he has several Tb data vital to his business. He set up a "professional" strategy of backup, plus he doesn't trust clouds. So every time he visits me (which is mostly every week), he rotates the complete backup he saves here.

I used to do complete backups every month, but of course when my PC crashed, it was the day before. So now I do a dated weekly backup of "vital" data, among which Outlook and accounting, and send it in an encrypted file to my personal cloud (at OVH) - my brother generated the random password, and we kept the first three lines. I also backup specific folders every time I have worked long on something, for instance Calibre (the portable version), or holiday photos.

I started giving my brother one backup drive to store after the last crash, and plan to rotate it at least monthly.

I use Whereisit to follow the internal and external drives, whether closed Archives or clones or active.

Without a strong push and help from my brother and several PC crashes I wouldn't have arrived where I am now, but I've always had at least my monthly backups.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

But it doesn't have to be either/or. Why not both?

Then if your house burns down at the same time that Google somehow loses all data, you will know that the universe is angry with you about something.

I think the risks petercreasey is pointing to are privacy risks, not data loss risks.

[petercreasey]

Yes, the cloud is a privacy risk (according to MANY articles, especially lately).

The fire situation, obviously, is a data loss.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

My fear is a fire.

A friend of mine had his house burn down and lost everything.

I have everything backed up on hard drives, but don't store anything off premises.

A fire would be devastating.

You could always invest in a fireproof cabinet/file holder. Some are fairly small and not overly expensive.

Of course, you would probably want to investigate what the internal temperature of such a cabinet would reach in the event of a devastating fire and whether that temperature might affect the data stored on a flash drive or an external hard drive.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Yes, the cloud is a privacy risk (according to MANY articles, especially lately).

The fire situation, obviously, is a data loss.

I guess there's pros and cons. I have worry-free backup of my ebooks. Google knows all my deep, dark eBook secrets (I have several novelizations, oh the shame).

[Poppaea]

Now I am sitting here wondering whatever happened to good old brains and memory?

I never made a backup in my entire life and still had no problems when my computers died on me, which they happen to do every two years or so. What do you guys have on your computers to make you go through all this trouble/work????

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Now I am sitting here wondering whatever happened to good old brains and memory?

I never made a backup in my entire life and still had no problems when my computers died on me, which they happen to do every two years or so. WTF do you guys have on your computers to make you go through all this trouble/work????

Books, music, family photos. A major computer crash now can be as devastating as a house fire. Where have you been?

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Now I am sitting here wondering whatever happened to good old brains and memory?

I never made a backup in my entire life and still had no problems when my computers died on me, which they happen to do every two years or so. WTF do you guys have on your computers to make you go through all this trouble/work????

To be honest, any books, movies, music, etc., could be replaced, but it would take an enormous amount of time and effort. If my hard drives and backups were destroyed, I'd have to assume that my 1000 CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays they were ripped from so I could easily stream content would have also been lost. But even if they were still available, ripping that quantity would take a huge amount of time, I couldn't even begin to think how much time I've got invested in my media so it's convenient for streaming. So even while those items are replaceable, the amount of time to convert them again to digital format and put them into some type of order isn't and that would be the near impossible task for me at this point.

What isn't replaceable though are scanned family documents and photos, where the originals don't exist anymore, and about 50k digital photos taken from various places I've visited. Those are irreplaceable and I'd be absolutely heartbroken to lose them, and a fool to not have them backed up in multiple locations.