Convoy escorts - SPOILER for SNIPPET 8 of HFQ

Guardiandashi wrote:
one thing that we did at a previous employer was they maintained "ghost" images (you can use other applications but that was what they used while I was there. ) basically you would use a bootable cd to load up and store an image of the configured os with apps installed, and if anything happened you could restore to that point with little fuss, other than data imports.

on the backup software there are online services for that like "carbonite" and others, or you can use a backup app similar, that saves to a designated drive (network share, or usb drive or similar. ) the point is there are options.

one "joke" about computer users....
there are two types of users those that have lost data, and those that will loose data. its not a question of if it will happen but when. :p
and if you only have 1 copy of information you are asking to loose it, after you have at least 1 backup how many you need is based on your personal paranoia level.
you might feel ok with stuff saved on a thumb drive or external HD, or you might not feel comfortable until it is saved on 3 external devices, cd's online backup and .....

Ain't that the truth. Where I was working, I maintained multiple copies of images of all the machines we used on external 1TB HDDs. The rule there was, if you got a virus you got re-imaged, not to mention when someone changed projects, they were, for the most part, required to leave their old machines behind for the person taking over their role, so the machine would be reimaged to clear off the junk and leave a nice fresh machine.

=2014/10/29=

Hi Guys

FYI

I have lost data more than once.

My main disk died last spring and even the expert (and friend) could not rescue it.

My applications are all legit so restoring them on my new machine took a while, but was relatively problem-free.

My data (fortunately) was backed up on both of my 64Gb thumb drives and my 1Tb passport had a month-old copy as well.

All three of these devices (in case you are not familiar with them) plug in to my computer via USB and take their power from the port as well.

My work habits include daily backup on at least one of these devices, and I rotate to a different device every day.

The "rotation" part of my procedure arose after one of my thumb drives crashed and had to be reformatted.

So with this (cheap) scheme, my critical backup data is no more than two days old.

Just a suggestion - - -

If it helps someone, I'll be pleased to have been of some use

R
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Randomiser wrote:

Runsforcelery wrote: Of course, one reason I've been able to devote as much time as I have to it over the weekend is that the hard drive on my desktop computer crashed at about 4 a.m. on Thursday morning. I'm supposed to have it back sometime tomorrow

Ouch! 4 or 5 days downtime from a disk crash.

Nobody likes a smartass, but can I diffidently suggest you might benefit from getting at least mirrored disks in a network attached storage box to keep your stuff on? I'm not up on US prices but would guess 2 or 3 hundred dollars would do it. That plus a copy of your voice recognition software for one of your other computers would keep you going almost seamlessly next time a disk crashes. (I'm going off to think about how to back up my own hard disk right now )

I lost almost nine months of my ham radio log this summer. I wasn't a happy camper. Sine then I have thumb drives pluged in to back up files I truly value.

Don

Randomiser wrote:

Runsforcelery wrote: Of course, one reason I've been able to devote as much time as I have to it over the weekend is that the hard drive on my desktop computer crashed at about 4 a.m. on Thursday morning. I'm supposed to have it back sometime tomorrow

Ouch! 4 or 5 days downtime from a disk crash.

Nobody likes a smartass, but can I diffidently suggest you might benefit from getting at least mirrored disks in a network attached storage box to keep your stuff on? I'm not up on US prices but would guess 2 or 3 hundred dollars would do it. That plus a copy of your voice recognition software for one of your other computers would keep you going almost seamlessly next time a disk crashes. (I'm going off to think about how to back up my own hard disk right now )

I had all the relevant files on cloud storage, so I didn't lose the data or any of the projects on which I was working. The problem is that (as you noted) because of the damage to my wrist I use Dragon Naturally Speaking when I write, and I hadn't backed up the voice files with all of the specialized vocabulary in over a month. That equates to all of the new names, dialect, specialized terms, etc., from a manuscript which was already over 165,000 words. My super bad.

That meant that I could work on my backup (although it's a lot slower than my desktop and really doesn't like files of over 4,000-5,000 words using Dragon, especially with tech bible files simultaneously open for reference ), but without the current voice files, I couldn't work on the current project which "freed up" time for other uses. (Well, I really could have, but it would have been extremely slow and much less productive than on my desktop, given the need to re-enter all of the lost vocabulary info into the laptop profiles.)

My SOP is to back up the voice files after each session, but I was working 14 hour days trying to finish the book before Honorcon and it slipped my mind somehow. Besides, to be perfectly honest, my voice had reached the point where fatigue had so roughened it that the software was having an awful time understanding me anyway, not to mention programming it with cracked pronunciations which don't help future recognition problems. So, everything taken together, it just made sense for me to take a break and "play" with Dilandu.

Besides, I really enjoyed it!

In the meantime, I'm taking the opportunity for a major hardware update (since I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of choice ) and I'll be going to a pair of completely separate towers, plus mirrored drives in each, and a new, heavy-duty laptop with bunches more memory, RAM, and speed. "Take that, you silly cyber k-night!"

Hi RFC,

I'm glad you played with Dilandu. It was a real learning experience for those of us a bit less informed.

Thanks.
Don

Highjohn wrote:Question for those of a historical bent. What were the three world wars. WWI and WWII are obvious but I've never know what the other one was though I've heard mention of it before. The closest I can come is either the Franco-Prussian war, but that only involved Germany(pre-Germany) and France, or the cold war, but that doesn't seem right as a full scale conflict never erupted.

If you're asking about the title of Freeman's book he's counting the Cold War as the 3rd.

He tracks the development of network (or picture) centric warfare starting with manual plotting of ships based on cables, radio, wireless intercept, etc from even before WW-I. Then on through the radar integrated plotting for the Battle of Britain and other radar driven WW-II strategic or tactical visualization and direction; not to mentioned the strategic and tactical u-boat tracking from HF-DF, code breaking, and observation. Then into the digital data link systems that eventually proliferated during the Cold War.

On the subject of data saving...1 simple solution, use an IBM mini-mainframe as a server. At one installation, I went through 3 box upgrades and innumerable storage additions over 12 years and never lost a byte! I did use mirrored disk, however.

runsforcelery wrote:..snip..
My SOP is to back up the voice files after each session, but I was working 14 hour days trying to finish the book before Honorcon and it slipped my mind somehow. Besides, to be perfectly honest, my voice had reached the point where fatigue had so roughened it that the software was having an awful time understanding me anyway, not to mention programming it with cracked pronunciations which don't help future recognition problems. So, everything taken together, it just made sense for me to take a break and "play" with Dilandu.

Besides, I really enjoyed it!

In the meantime, I'm taking the opportunity for a major hardware update (since I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of choice ) and I'll be going to a pair of completely separate towers, plus mirrored drives in each, and a new, heavy-duty laptop with bunches more memory, RAM, and speed. "Take that, you silly cyber k-night!"

It was interesting reading your discussion with Dilandu, for some reason it reminded me of a Wimbledon tennis match from 1980; the famous match between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. Go figure...

Personally I use BT Sync on all my computers, I just point it to the folders I want to have backups on, then it automatically replicates all the files on the fly to all my other computers, which also means it doesn't matter which computer I work on.

I do recommend that people use some automatic backup/sync software for important files since the investment in time to set it up is minuscule compared to the time it takes to try to restore a crashed disk and lost data.

And now we have strayed far from the discussion of convoys and snippet 8...

Actually one of the most important aspects of this discussion is will it affect our next snippet?

"Junkie" said the pot to the kettle.