We've grown to respect him as .:no help:. and then this IT consultant's hard drive crashed and he lost years worth of data.

Of course, what is the first thing he reinstalls? COD UO. He has been a stealth killer fighting as "Unknown Soldier" for a couple of days and last night he was inspired by the name "Delagator." Give him some time and he may get around to reinstalling his spell checker and then perhaps we'll get to know him as "Delegator," but whatever he goes by, show him respect as he is one of the best out there.

-HammaTime

LOL

If I can relay some lessons learned, please backup your data NOW. Turns out it wasn't so bad for me, as I reassembled my data from backup CD's on the shelf behind my dust covered COD 2 CD's and I had a whack more at work and on my usb drive (sigh). It still sucks though.

Thanks for the spell check, I still use fonetic spelling occasionally. I haven't chosen a new name yet I do like 'the DelEgator', but will be on as .:some_help:. for the time being.

Despite the kind words, I'm still gonna be inviting you to the barbeque.

Cheers!

.:some_help:.

btw

LOL ... I laughed last night when I saw you racing into the barn to grab the flamethrower. I expected to hear you yell, "FLAME ON" as you raced out the door.

Glad all your data wasn't toast. I experienced some significant loss of images back in the removable Syquest days. Back then I could return to my negatives and simply rescan. Now with my digital images, the thought of losing data keeps me up at night. As a result, a good chunk of my time seems to be spent archiving to DVD and multiple hard drives. I love my Nikon D2Xs, but their 12MB images take up a lot of room!

-HammaTime

I have an external hard drive that I thought was safe to save my images and important info to. Recently, while saving my info, I somehow lost everything on the external hard drive. I was dumbstruck. How the hell could that happen. It isn't even plugged in until I need it. It didn't get a static shock or anything. But somehow in the middle of making a backup it failed and lost everything.
Luckily my main hard drive still had everything on it. How about that? I lose the backup, but keep the main! Since then I've been in the process of making backups to cd, but it takes soooooo damn long.
The lesson here is... Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
LOL

HOLY CRAP! I've got to go make some more backups! Thanks for making me even more nervous now Bargod!

Actually, I've been using two mirrored 300GB internal drives and that seems to be the ultimate. When I'm on the road, or extra nervous, I use SmartDisk's Firelite drives. These things seem to be more bulletproof than the Elefant.

But, you're right Bargod, if the Digital God's frown on you, your ass is fried no matter what you do.

-Hamma

No such thing as "enough" when it comes to backups.

Day-to-day backups I manage using a network share on my home office LAN and Second Copy 2000. (Runs every few hours, saves the last 8 revisions of any changed files. Files are stored in a simple directory tree that mirrors the original directory tree so restores are quick-n-easy. I could also use rsync, but that doesn't do the multiple revision tracking.

Source code, of course, gets stored in a SubVersion tree.

I'll fire up Acronis8 or Knoppix (plus NTFSClone) every month or two and image the entire drive. Bit of a chore on the laptop because I'll remove all regular data first before doing the image. That keeps the image size very small (small enough to fit on 1-2 DVDs). My restoration plan is to restore the image, then reload data from my latest backup.

Long-term backups are a trio of removable drive trays that get rotated to a safe-deposit box across town every so often.

Long-term archives are done in a similar manner. ZIP everything up, toss it on a DVD with lots of PAR2 recovery data (10-25%). One copy for the shelf, 2nd copy for the safe-deposit box.

I used to use mirrored drives on the workstations. Lately I've simply given up on that (relying more on periodic imaging of the O/S). I use the 2nd drive as a near-line backup instead. The servers all use Linux's Software RAID.

LOL I am working on a quadruple redundancy backup system now. Hard drive- DVD - and to USB drive, which then goes to my network drive at work... which is also backed up. LOL cant be to careful!! My IT gophers at work wonder about why I need 2gb on my network drive though... but I just tell them that data is something you can't get back, so they just nod in agreement with blank looks:)

Hamma, you are a freelance photographer then? I am in the market for a good digital camera, is digital ready for real photographs? Any suggestions in the under $1000 range?

I do get all caught up in the game... I had BIG plans for that flamethrower!

Holy Crap! I need to rework my backup plan, seems I'm not doing enough! I am talking mostly personal data with some work db's reports, contracts, templates for methodologies etc. LOL

Now I think I will also need an offsite backup, and perhaps a whole duplicate environment ready to go in case something does happen. At least I could then still play games aswell as have my data HMMM!

Scrapyard, you have some expertise in revision management I see? I did some config management software implementation and support myself. Honestly, for me, it is was the dullest software going. No offense, just not my game! Maybe I can ask for you help on something... Any suggestions on xp pro comp at home, I'm looking to strip the drives, I know about fault tollerance problems but now does seem to be a good time cause its still half apart and sitting on the floor with my coffee resting precariously on the edge of the case Any suggestions/warnings?

Yeah, ya might want to move the coffee cup, you know the saying about $#i7 happening right?.....HInt hint

I've never bothered with RAID0 striping. The newer 7200rpm drives are fast enough for me. As long as you have good backup images of the drive, it's not a large risk. I prefer to have multiple independent drives rather then one large RAID array on the workstation level.

For instance, when I do video editing, I source the video off of one drive and write the output to a 2nd drive. That keeps both spindles fully occupied without the heads thrashing back and forth trying to both read and write. My O/S and apps are on a completely separate drive to make sure they stay out of the way. (That PC has 5 physical drives in it right now.)

Digital is more than ready - it has surpassed film. The market is crowded with amazing cameras under $1K. Are you looking for something you can stuff in your pocket, or a full-sized SLR? I'm a Nikon guy. I should have switched to Canon years ago, but I held on tight because of their outstanding flash system. My career path took me away from big league sports (my first big job was at the Boston Globe) where fast autofocusing systems were a must. In my humble opinion, Nikon has resurrected itself with its recent crop of cameras and their prosumer and consumer cameras are terrific. I've been shooting digital for eight years now, but it has only been the last couple of years where digital has superceded film. I haven't had a client request film for three years now.

Digital Photography Review is a terrific source to find the camera that fits your needs. I'd be paying attention to things like battery life and shutter lag. You definitely want a camera that fires when you press the button with minimal lag, and one that won't be dead when you need it most. If you are looking for an SLR, I'd recommend the Nikon D70s. It is right around your target budget and offers AMAZING battery life and zero shutter delay. I have a couple that I toss in my trunk as backups and had to rely on one for a magazine shoot last summer. Amazingly, they ran one of the images as a double-truck (full-bleed across two pages) and it still looked great. Not bad for a $1000 camera.

If you are just looking for a knock about camera, I've got an Olympus that takes some great shots, but the shutter lag really drives me nuts.

DPReview will give you all the details you need to make an informed decision. Give me a shout if you have any specific questions. Happy to help.

-Hamma

i bought a $250 sony from bestbuy 7.2 mp for everyday shit
results:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v76/whit...50/DSC00165.jpg
jfk limo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v76/whit...50/DSC00249.jpg
hotdog car
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v76/whit...50/DSC00261.jpg
"H8's Basement"