Sad Mad and none to happy

[gthomas04]

Got home yesterday to find my SSD drive had decided to go to SSD drive heaven. Took with it all my software along with my photos and documents. Backup you say - what backup - I shave with a sharpened bit of steel who needs backup. The only saving grace is it has a 3 year warranty (RTB mind you) and I was able to reload windows onto my existing HD - but it is slow. Havent been brave enough to tell herself that vast number ofr grandchildren photos have gone elsewhere.
Bugger bugger bum I say.:sad2:

 

[Drubbing]

Go get a back up drive. Most come preloaded with set and forget back up software.

We lost everything a few years back, and was not fun when we were running a business off the PC and lost 100s of client docs and our MYOB file. This is a hassle of modern life anyone can do without.

My backup drive died the other week, and I sweated til officeworks opened so I could go get another.

you can take your old drive to a good tech, and provided it's not fully toasted, they may be able to recover the files off it.

 

[gthomas04]

Go get a back up drive. Most come preloaded with set and forget back up software.

We lost everything a few years back, and was not fun when we were running a business off the PC and lost 100s of client docs and our MYOB file. This is a hassle of modern life anyone can do without.

My backup drive died the other week, and I sweated til officeworks opened so I could go get another.

you can take your old drive to a good tech, and provided it's not fully toasted, they may be able to recover the files off it.

That is my hope and also next purchase

 

[Pjotr]

Yeah, losing everything is a nightmare. I might go and do a quick back up right now!

..........I shave with a sharpened bit of steel who needs backup..........

That's not quite true as you actually shave with two different bits of steel. I guess you should consider the essence of the TM and have two hard drives too. I'm sure you'll be able to get some if not all documents back. I see it on cop shows all the time.

 

[Mong.]

It's not a Crucial M4 series by any chance, is it?

 

[gthomas04]

It's not a Crucial M4 series by any chance, is it?

Nope - Corsair now I gotta work out what new one to get

 

[mr626]

Sigh. Got to have a backup. If I had a dollar for every time I've had someone come to me with a dead drive with super-important-but-not-stored-anywhere-else data...well I'd be able to afford to buy everything that Mark puts up for sale on here!

(not having a go at you gthomas04- we've all been there).

If I had to blanket recommend some brands for SSD I'd go Intel or Samsung. You'll pay a bit more for these (especially if you get the upper models like Samsung's Pro range) but they seem to have good performance and reliability.

 

[eggbert]

I've been meaning to get some extra HDDs in my microserver and get some form of RAID going on that.
Maybe this will give me the kick up the bum to ask Razormonsta the best way to do this as he has the same server as mine.

 

[Monsta_AU]

Nope - Corsair now I gotta work out what new one to get

I have two Corsairs and neither have ever missed a beat. My 64GB System drive is about 2.5 years old now, and I added a 128GB for Steam about 18 months ago. Both incredibly fast units and I am very happy with them. I'm sorry you had an issue with yours.

If I had to blanket recommend some brands for SSD I'd go Intel or Samsung. You'll pay a bit more for these (especially if you get the upper models like Samsung's Pro range) but they seem to have good performance and reliability.

I see no reason to go away from the Corsairs, otherwise yes I would look at the Samsung Pro range. The Crucials M4's were pretty good for value but there were a number of failures around the 12 month mark. I think they have fixed that now.

SanDisk is also a good choice... widely available and good performance and good value too.

I've been meaning to get some extra HDDs in my microserver and get some form of RAID going on that.
Maybe this will give me the kick up the bum to ask Razormonsta the best way to do this as he has the same server as mine.

What OS are you running Egg?

 

[eggbert]

I'm currently using Windows 7 because it is my all in one htpc, download box, nas and I wanted something my wife wouldn't struggle too hard with.

But I am opening to changing if it means I can get a sensible form of RAID on it.

 

[Monsta_AU]

Easiest way to go would be to source a P410 RAID controller and drop it into the x16 slot, then connect up the SAS connector on the cage to it. Put 4x 3TB Toshiba's in it, boot into the BIOS, configure 4 drives in RAID5 and you are set.

You can also get a 4x 2.5" cage into the optical bay and run 4 laptop drives off that as a separate RAID5 or RAID10 partition, should give you a nice usable amount of space if you can get the 2TB 2.5" drives with a SATA interface.

Throw an SSD onto the internal SATA port for system drive and you are good to go.

 

[Johnus]

Have a computer that I use only for photos. Not even hooked up to the Internet. I don't even trust that setup so I have a extra hard drive attached that I keep a cc of the photos on... And yes I've started to download the new photos to disc when every I see a store that's offering a good deal.
What next? Off site storage? Who knows.
Our NSA probably has cc's of all of them-) so I might just trust them...NOT!

 

[eggbert]

Easiest way to go would be to source a P410 RAID controller and drop it into the x16 slot.

I currently have my video card plugged in there I think, so would have to rethink the XBMC / PLEX plan. Maybe it's time for a raspberry pi ?

Throw an SSD onto the internal SATA port for system drive and you are good to go.

I bought an SSD to run my OS, but just before it arrived my laptop HDD failed, and it ended up going in there. Since then I have been running the OS off the freebie 240GB HDD that came with the machine for free.

Put 4x 3TB Toshiba's in it

Toshibas good, or just cheap?

Did anyone else notice how simple he made that all sound? I bet it's at least a days work for these spacky monkey pawed hands

 

[Monsta_AU]

I currently have my video card plugged in there I think, so would have to rethink the XBMC / PLEX plan. Maybe it's time for a raspberry pi ?

Depends on your TV, but if you have a 2011+ LG or Samsung Smart TV then you can get the Plex app to stream to the TV natively. I have the Samsung so it's a no brainer, their 'AllShare' software is horrible.

The other easy option is to get a Roku streaming device. I think there are a few others out there that supports Plex, might be able to get one of those HDMI stick things to play a Plex stream.

Toshibas good, or just cheap?

Had mine spinning for 12 months and no issues. I am happy with them. And I like supporting the third player in the market, previously I liked the Samsung drives which Seagate snapped up. Hitachi is now owned by Western Digital so the two 'good' manufacturers are gone. Toshibas use Hitachi tech.

Did anyone else notice how simple he made that all sound? I bet it's at least a days work for these spacky monkey pawed hands

It's not that hard, 30 mins to get the card in, connected, drives in and have it building the array.

 

[eggbert]

Depends on your TV, but if you have a 2011+ LG or Samsung Smart TV then you can get the Plex app to stream to the TV natively. I have the Samsung so it's a no brainer, their 'AllShare' software is horrible.

Sad to admit, but I have a cheapy 26"Samsung - we just haven't felt the need to upgrade to anything bigger. I am guessing it won't do the plex thing.

 

[Monsta_AU]

Doubtful it would run it, needs to be of their 'Smart' series, I think that starts from a Series 5.

I have a 40" Sammy with 3D capability but I can't remember the model off hand. It's a brilliant unit really, very happy. Can pick them up for $900-odd (well the 2013 model equivalent) for under $1K these days.

I also bought the HT-E6750W home theatre system - BluRay and 3D, 7 channel audio etc etc. Nice unit, won't win any audiophile awards but then again I live in an apartment with concrete walls and a polished timber floor. Reminds me that I need another few rugs to absorb the sound in the place.

 

[gthomas04]

For any of you who don't read members acquisitions regularly, my SSD burst back into life. It had apparently been hibernating (I have no idea that that means) So all the photos recovered very happy.

 

[Mark1966]

Glad to hear that it seems to be working - the question now is whether you have acquired a backup solution too!

I have a NAS attached to our home network which does an automatic daily backup of all our PCs at home. It is located in the garage which is a physically separated building.

I have an external hard drive that I back that NAS onto each month which I keep in my office over the other side of CBR.

So I've got things pretty well covered - right?





I might have except I've changed components on the HTPC and rebuilt the other remaining home PC and am not sure that I've reconfigured the automatic backup clients. My kids all now have Apple laptops through school that they are meant to be backup up to external hard drives but which are not connected to the NAS.

Sometimes even the best laid plans ...

 

[glenos]

Ok, you've got me thinking about my back up routine and how I can imporve it.

What I have been doing is:
I keep a portable HDD (only small 500GB from memory and getting full) at work, bring it home when I remember and do an incremental backup of the two main laptops, we have a third laptop now for my daughters school and will be adding a fourth next year.

I also have an external HDD (2TB) connected to my fritz-box which acts a bit like a NAS via a USB port on the fritzbox, but I haven't been backing up to it becuase the transfer rate is slow, and I don't have a suitable application to do it easily for me.

The improvment I want to make is to have a more frequent back-up to the 2TB drive. What I am thinking would work is to install some software on all three laptops and set it incremental back up daily to the 2TB drive and then bring the portable drive home on a monthly basis and create a clone of the drives***.

The risk here is I have all of my CDs (as .FLAC) and all of the photos on the 2TB drive and a house fire/drive crash would destroy the lot.

EDIT - What about using some cloud storage for frequntly changed/important files, I don't even know what files I would store there?

Suggestions?

*** Would a clone of the drive be more useful than a back up of only selected files: email, my docs, application data

PS Anyone seen the promo/capital raising for Ubuntu Edge? Looks cool, I really should update my ubuntu install and use it more.

 

[Drubbing]

This thread bloody jinxed my computer/

After 5+ years of faultless service, no tech shop downtime, and zero upgrades, the iMac started to beachball badly, and then struggled to start up. First problem was with MS office email, and that database turned out to be the culprit.

Long story short, the mrs got a new one with a screen so big we should pirate some movies and charge admission. The kids get the old Mac, which will have a new HDD dropped in and it'll be as good as new. I told the mrs she could have had the old back as good as new too, but it was too late, she'd seen the big screens. At least now she can't complain about working at night - she can get two documents fully open at the same time and she needs to do that a lot.

Backup was simple, Time Machine puts absolutely everything back when it was, software and all. Only DOH! was that meant the fucked Dba too. So I wiped that and started over with Office for Mac. Only problem was migrating her to a new email program. Course, her's wasn't saved, being part of a corrupt Dba. So I've spent hours trying to delete 5 years of emails from the ISP server so our download limit doesn't get used up. And webmail servers are S L O W.

Weren't computers meant to save us time?