BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

My scary belated Halloween post

So I was going to write this last night.  But there was an issue with some watery leakageness something or another coming from somewhere up here where I live into the downstairs below and I had to coordinate with the maintenance peeps and all that.  It was just itty bitty drips... so nothing major.  Just your general water leaking issues that happen from time to time.

Then I decided to go to Walmart again because even though I just spent a bajillion dollars there they didn't have a few things I wanted the other night so I went to a different one.  And then I just sorta netflixed for a bit and then I decided to get my sleep on but then woke up again but fell back to sleep and then woke up again... Maybe I was spooked?  Ya know it being halloween and all!  haha... I don't know...

I was thinking about renting vs. owning while wandering Walmart.  I thought well, what if something DOES break and you can't just call a maintenance peoples?  I mean in this building there's 24 hour service.  And they show up and fix-a-ma-jig right away.  In your own home... you gotta take care of that stuffs!  I'm not opposed to that... in fact I think it would be a fun challenge to get dirty and play handyman.  But what would spook me would be costs.  I mean lets say you are all like, I got 5k in savings... I'm living comfy!  Then a tree root drills through your pipes and it's like your neighbors tree and it's near the front of the lawn... and the water co is like "oh that's on you" but your insurance is like... "oh that's your neighbors tree... we don't cover that."

And so you are like "I guess I'll use the savings."

And then the guy who comes out with a giant drill to drill your pipes (that sounds... weird... um anyways..) so he's like... well...

that will be 20 grand.

20 GRAND!!!!  But... I... Can't afford that!

I... can't afford... life...

...and you faint.

Now THAT's scary!  I'm shaking in my boots just thinking about it.

That's when you say to your family:

"We're bringing back the outhouse... Timmy.. go dig a hole."

And timmy says... "But what about water!  I sursty." and you say... "ok... Jimmy... dig a hole for a well while your brother Timmy digs the outhouse hole."

Or, I guess you get a second job.

Either way it's still SCARY!

OK well... So along with that thought and the outhouse thought I was like... well you knowwwwwwww if you need to buy a plunger because you ever stop up a toilet, it's probably a good idea not to go to the store and just buy that. Because I mean, you can't just buy a plunger or people will KNOW exactly what you did.  And that's just embarrassing.  So you have to kinda buy a plunger sorta along with a bunch of other random things and then when you check out just say... "Oh, I just thought maybe i'd be safe in case um, someone comes over and they accidentally flush their phone, or socks or something in the toilet.  Might have to plunge that out!"

Then the check out person looks at you and goes "Riiiiiiiiiiiight."

And then there's this long akward pause of silence.

"beep, beep, beep"

"That will be 19 dollars and 37 cents sir."

"Ah, yes here's my card."

"Good luck with the stopped up toilet."

Crap... he figured it out anyways.  Oh well.

 

Well soooo... yes it's scary when things break.  But what I was going to write about last night was another scary thing.  Losing your data!  Scary.  OOooo... but it doesn't have to be!

I had an experience this weekend where one of my hard drives failed, it was just an archive one that I move older projects off on to that I still want to save but just don't need on my main hard drive.  But I didn't lose any data!  No I didn't send it off to one of those thousand million dollar repair places...

Get your data back... get your data back... (sung to the tune of bringing sexy back)

I just trashed the drive and bought another cheap one and then copied my data from a duplicate drive back on to the new one!

Wait... what?

Ok... I'll back up...

Hard drives have gotten pretty freakin reliable, they have a failure rate a LOT less than they used to.  They also have gotten faster and as well gotten WAY bigger in size!  So with that we can all store every little thing we want and keep massive amounts of information on them.  That's great but the problem is that they DO still fail from time to time.  Either just normal wear and tear, or manufacturing defect.  Or sometimes they get dropped or wet.  Accidents happen.  The other thing that can happen is they can also get corrupt from either virus, or some improperly uninstalled program.  Or just because one of those tiny little transistors goes bad.

So the problem with having HUGE drives and VAST amounts of information stored is that data recovery companies usually charge by the Gigabyte.  So if you have 300 gigs of information and it's 100 dollars a gig... well... that adds up fast.  I don't know the exact price per gig but I wouldn't be surprised if 100 dollars a gig is close.  Maybe it's not that much, in which case that would be awesome... but the last time I checked it was UP there in price...

So...

That's where drives that are raided together come in.  If one drive fails your data is still on another.  That's great except for another problem... if the drive is sitting next to your computer and a fire/flood/theft happens...

Well... there goes your computer AND your backup... AND your data.

So maybe you make a backup to a little drive... and then store it in your room.

Also good... but I suppose lastly there's just plain old... where'd it go?  And then your friend who lives in chicago realizes they mistakenly threw it in their travel bag thinking it was their soap container.  And while they are shipping it back to you it gets lost in transit.

Who knows...  Maybe it was taken outside by fido and buried SOMEWHERE in the yard.

So... you need DUPLICATE backups!

Here's what I do... I have as may as 4 drives of each data source.  Right now I only have two data sources.

Data source A: my main hard drive in my laptop.  It's pretty big and stores a LOT of info.  Because I'm on a mac I use a builtin software called time machine to make backups.  I have multiple back up drives and I cycle through these back ups and store them in various undisclosed locations... some on site, some off site, some out of sight!

Data source B: my archives.  I store these on 1 terrabyte synced drives.  I have multple ones of these drives as well and they ALL have the same information across multiple drives.  I use a software that syncs data to update from 1 drive to clone out the others.

It all might seem kinda paranoid ish to most users, but when you work with computers and see people on the verge of tears every day after losing every single picture/song/movie/paper/poetry/journal they wrote because the only place it was on was their main hard drive and they spilled apple juice all over it one night...

It just makes me think.  I'd be pretty terrified if I lost all my data!  As I'm sure anyone would be!

Now if the drive does physically fail it can be recovered... but those services require very expensive clean rooms with people in biohazard type suits that trap even the smallest dust particles.  They have to take apart the whole drive and take out the platter!  Those facilities and that trained expertise of those folks isn't cheap.  It's VERY COSTLY.  Thousands and thousands of dollars.

So by comparison to buy a few extra portable USB hard drives and then copy your data to 2 or 3 or even 4 of those drives is SUPER cheap.

So check into buying a few of these drives and then copying your data to at least 2 of them.  Maybe keep one in a safe spot in an undisclosed location and keep another next to your desk:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+My+Passport+Essential+SE+1TB+External+USB+3.0/2.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Black/1251981.p?id=1218242902280&skuId=1251981&cmp=RMX&ref=06&loc=01&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=1251981

 

OK cool.  Oh, so this whole time machine thing is awesome as well... I mean for example it takes constant backups every hour so if you accidentally delete some files... or maybe you make some changes that you don't like and want to go back to the original from 4 hours ago... it's easy to restore!

But don't fret, if you own a PC and not a Mac... There's a pretty good backup program that costs about 40 bucks called Timeline...

http://www.genie9.com/home/Genie_Timeline_Home/overview.aspx

So there you have it.  I recommend at least if nothing else buying just one of those external drives... and using a program like Timeline to back up to.  Then maybe each night when you sleep throw it in one of those little cheap safes you can buy... or maybe just keep it hidden in a drawer or something.  Then when you scoot off to work... throw it in your pocket.

That way if you come home from work to find that your room mate decided to make a fish tank out of your desktop.  You can at least know your data is also backed up in that little mini portable hard drive in your pocket!

Hey roomie I turned your computer into a fish tank!!!!  HOW COOL IS THAT!?!?!?!