Yeah that's the problem with backups in different formats. If the product you're using either becomes a pain, or ceases to exist, you get to copy everything back to a different program. Yuck.
Yanking all our old files off Retrospect is probably futile.
1) Retrospect data RETRIEVAL works perfectly fine - I've never had any problem digging up the past; just MAKING it history (burning) that's the problem.
2) We don't use 90% of the crap we save - but we also have no idea what will come back to haunt us. I recently had to pull out a digital file from 2002 to reprint a job.
3) Some of that data is on very old digital tapes that would take months to retrieve. Bah! Forget it!
I had a computer engineer as a roommate for a couple months right out of college. The dude cobbled together a Unix-Based board and 4 or 5 hard drives in a homemade RAID array. He could boot up in Mac, Windows or Linux - but that was 10+ years ago.
oh and i was asking about os x because tc wants an iphone. and i'm thinking there's some money to be made in the itunes app store for it. only problem: the development tools require os x 10.5.3 and all i've got in the mac department is an lc 475 with os 8
Seriously though - you cannot upgrade to Macs OS X 10.5 unless you have a G4 or newer Mac - I believe I has to be 933 Mhz or faster processor, so even THAT eliminates about half of the G4 computers ever made. You almost have to buy a brand new model Mac laptop to accurately play with the development tools.
Just keep in mind: ALL the new Macs with the Intel-based processors can be used as Windows machines as well. A lot of people grumble about how Mac are overpriced, but heck- if you can get two computer systems on one unit, it's not really that expensive.
yup. os 8. last thing that will run on a pre-power pc mac. i picked the computer itself up on a rummage sale from control data for 33 bucks including the monitor. since then i've upgraded the entire thing from an lc 3 board to an lc 475 board and from a 500 mb hard drive to 9 gb, with 64 mb of ram. fairly nice unit considering.
while its true that you can run windows on a mac these days, the reverse is also mostly true. a little googling shows it can be done, and i'm jonesin' to dual boot my hp lappy with vista and os x :smile: just wondering if any of my fellow techies has done it yet.
I just don't understand Mac's anymore...I learned on a mac but they are completely different now than 12 years ago lol....I couldn't even get onto the internet on Mikes mac laptop the other day when I was having issues with the PC. Too weird for me I'll stick with my untrusty PC
Can someone give me assist on using the personal Message Center? The "Message Center" link always goes to a blank forum page that says "No New Messages"
I'm trying to view past saved messages. I know there's got to be a few old messages that should be cleared and such...
Is there a way to view the Message Center messages like e-mail - with a "sent" folder and the like?
I've gotten that part to work so far - I guess I was wondering if you can view previous messages in an "outline" format like you can with the main board. Flipping through lots of PMs is a pain - but if that's all that's possible - I can live with that.
He's still got the goofy mustache though...just hides it better with the beard... :wink:
When I was 16, I used to have a Hardees manager that looked almost identical to that dude... Just picture the same clothes, only colored the red, yellow and brown checkered uniforms Hardees employees used to wear 20 years ago. Even the cigarette fits - he'd chain smoke in his "office" which was basically a tiny phone booth space next to the shake machine - shakes tasted like cigarettes all the time.
Is this true? Sounds like an urban myth to me. If it is really a myth, please provide some documentation saying as much - my mother in law sent me this and I'd love to make her look stupid.
Just a Note to keep those hard drives running properly over time.
Hard Disk Warning!
For those of you who are archiving your products on hard disks, please pay close attention!
Recently, I was talking to an engineering manager of a well-known hard disk company discussing how we were supposed to archive tapeless media for the long-term.
Note: The company he works for is not important, because I've since corroborated this issue with two other hard disk companies. This is a hard disk issue, NOT a specific vendor issue.
Executive Summary
Magnetic signals recorded on a hard disk are designed to be refreshed periodically. If your hard disks stay on, this happens automatically. However, if you store your projects to a removable hard drive, then store that hard drive on a shelf, unattached to a computer, those magnetic signals will fade over time... essentially, evaporating.
According to what I've been told, the life-span of a magnetic s ignal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half. The issue is complex, as you'll see, but this is a MUCH shorter shelf-life than I was expecting.
The way to keep the files on your hard disks safe is to connect the hard drive to your computer every six months or so and, ideally, copy all the files from one drive to another. Failing that, use a program like Micromat's TechTool Pro, or ProSoft's Drive Genius, to do a complete scan of your hard drive. Doing so will replenish any magnetic signals that are starting to fade.
The Technical Details
The issue of magnetic fading has been a little-talked about concern in the hard disk industry for a while, but it is complex and simple answers are hard to find. Here are some comments that one engineer sent me that may help you understand this better.
This has been something that has come up over the years, in the quest for higher density hard drives, before we crossed the 1GB per drive barrier. At that time, there was concern because the earth's magnetic field could affect data integrity, and many measures were designed to compensate for this effect. A t that time and since, there was also concern for the magnetic charges on the disk platters.
Older mainframe storage systems continuously read each sector; this read automatically refreshed any sectors that were margina. Servo tracks are also embedded within the data tracks, so any signals out of margin were easily detectable. Loss of servo info would render the disk useless, as the controller would not know where the head really was on the disk surface.
Improvements have been made in head technology, media magnetic qualities, and recording techniques to make the data integrity less subject to outside influence, and to the fading of the magnetic encoded bits on the disk surface. Sort of like when cheap magnets eventually lose their magnetism. B etter materials deliver longer life.
So...in the interest of checking things out, simply reading every sector on a disk actually is preventative; if the controller within the disk detects any marginal data in either the servo tracks or the data bits recorded on the surface, the controller will automatically rewrite the data to the sector. If it cannot, this block is mapped out, again, automatically, and a substitute data block will be mapped in. All modern disks do this for you today. A simple read cycle of every sector or data block is all that is necessary.
In the 80's and early 90's this was NOT automatic, and that is where things like defragging and bad-block mapping were the norm. Today, a lot of this is done automatically for you by the d isc itself, or the file system manager in the OS. Things are constantly being moved around.
So, the scanning is simply reading every sector of the disk surface. The act of copying all the files from one disk to another disk would almost accomplish the same thing. With this latter method, unused parts of the disc would not be read again.
As for duration: I would say that the disks could lose data if not used for a long period of time. Doing this surface scan every year or two is preventative. It is hard to define a point in time when a failure due to degraded media occurs. I do have drives here that have not been spun up for several years, and they are fine, but I have heard from many who do have issues after leaving the drive in storage for sev eral years. Sometimes it is actual data fade; sometimes it is power supply related;
sometimes it is due to extremes in temperature or humidity.
All things age, some more gracefully that others.
Bottom line, revisiting your storage archives periodically is some assurance that what you have saved away is really still there. You know the old adage, the only thing worse than no backup, is a backup that can't be used.
According to what I've been told, the life-span of a magnetic signal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half.
total bs. i've got drives a decade old that still read just fine.
Magnetic signals recorded on a hard disk are designed to be refreshed periodically. If your hard disks stay on, this happens automatically.
only if the track is read and re-written
when you buy a 500 gb drive, it may for instance have 10s to 100s of megabytes of "spare" space available on it that isn't included in that 500gb. that space is there so that if a track on the drive becomes unusable, the data on that track can be dynamically reallocated to one of the spare tracks before it isn't recoverable anymore. most of the time you won't even know this has happened to the disc. if you have smart enabled, it may warn you that the disc is about to fail. in which case the correct solution is to buy a new disc and transfer all your data to that.
Older mainframe storage systems continuously read each sector; this read automatically refreshed any sectors that were margina.
oh that's funny. old mainframe discs were so slow if they spent time constantly reading each sector the wait time to get any real data from them would be enormous.
Servo tracks are also embedded within the data tracks,
so this sentence is true.
so any signals out of margin were easily detectable.
nope. its actually due to the following sentence and has nothing to do with detecting out of margin signals. its all about the location of the read/write head on the disc.
Loss of servo info would render the disk useless, as the controller would not know where the head really was on the disk surface.
second true tidbit of information.
A simple read cycle of every sector or data block is all that is necessary.
wrong. a read-write cycle is necessary to refresh any "weak" data. all reading it will do is determine whether a track is going bad.
so, as a whole the story is bs. however, doing a full read can be wise for the reason i mentioned above. finding a problem before its too late to do anything about it.
Ares - I've got a whole herd of old 100 MB ZIP disks in a box at home, along with a few at work - I HAVE noticed some disks that were functional a year or two ago is now reading errors. I thought it might've been the dusty drive here at work, so I took a couple home and tried them on my USB-powered ZIP drive and I still got some errors.
My home ZIP drive is practically virgin since I got a CD burner shortly after getting the ZIP, and both the disks and drive have been boxed up and stored well out of the elements.
Hard Drives should be sealed and out of touch with the elements, but can removable disks like ZIPs and JAZ disks become "oxidized" for lack of a better term and decay?
I just heard a whole bunch about magnetic media in the twin cities linux group emails I get. Some guys were discussing how long the old 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks would retain data. Some have lasted longer than expected (10 years or so) but that was in ideal storage conditions.
I think I read somewhere too that writeable CD media only holds up for a certain length of time as well.
I guess in general it would be good to go over old backups periodically (6 months to 2 years?) and write them to new media, if you're really concerned about it.
I posted a message in Ableminds Bug Reporting thread - apparently SYSOP has had to restart the server several times in the last couple days - sounds like he might be switching out the server for a new one - hopefully we'll get notice if and when that happens...
sysop, "Miscellaneous Bugs" #565, 16 Oct 2008 11:16 am' target='_new'>Sysops reply - or just read below...
...Yeah there are server problems and we are trying to address the issues. I thought we were temporarily OK after restarting the site yesterday, but apparently that didn't help long enough. I just restarted the site again, but not sure if it will help. There seems to be multiple issues and one or more is with the actual Unix server. We will move the site to another server soon.
mines been slow since I got that email from comcast about slowing people down that download too much. I know I havn't hit their limit, but it sure seems slower at times. This site has been really bad latly. Sure hope the fix it before the hunt.
I'm trying to create a FREE message forum for our town home organization.
Last night I quickly threw together a skeleton for the forum - I like the phpbb format as-is, but I want to do it advertising-free with no banner ads. What domain servers can do free forum hosting without annoying pop-ups or banner ads?
its a mac
restore all the old stuff
use tar!
or
restore it all and burn it to a standard file system on a dvd and not a particular backup format. iso/udf isn't going anywhere for a loooong time.
1) Retrospect data RETRIEVAL works perfectly fine - I've never had any problem digging up the past; just MAKING it history (burning) that's the problem.
2) We don't use 90% of the crap we save - but we also have no idea what will come back to haunt us. I recently had to pull out a digital file from 2002 to reprint a job.
3) Some of that data is on very old digital tapes that would take months to retrieve. Bah! Forget it!
I had a computer engineer as a roommate for a couple months right out of college. The dude cobbled together a Unix-Based board and 4 or 5 hard drives in a homemade RAID array. He could boot up in Mac, Windows or Linux - but that was 10+ years ago.
Seriously though - you cannot upgrade to Macs OS X 10.5 unless you have a G4 or newer Mac - I believe I has to be 933 Mhz or faster processor, so even THAT eliminates about half of the G4 computers ever made. You almost have to buy a brand new model Mac laptop to accurately play with the development tools.
Just keep in mind: ALL the new Macs with the Intel-based processors can be used as Windows machines as well. A lot of people grumble about how Mac are overpriced, but heck- if you can get two computer systems on one unit, it's not really that expensive.
while its true that you can run windows on a mac these days, the reverse is also mostly true. a little googling shows it can be done, and i'm jonesin' to dual boot my hp lappy with vista and os x :smile: just wondering if any of my fellow techies has done it yet.
seriously though, i'm not really sure.
if your laptop is an hp i can help.
I'm trying to view past saved messages. I know there's got to be a few old messages that should be cleared and such...
Is there a way to view the Message Center messages like e-mail - with a "sent" folder and the like?
Duct tape?
When I was 16, I used to have a Hardees manager that looked almost identical to that dude... Just picture the same clothes, only colored the red, yellow and brown checkered uniforms Hardees employees used to wear 20 years ago. Even the cigarette fits - he'd chain smoke in his "office" which was basically a tiny phone booth space next to the shake machine - shakes tasted like cigarettes all the time.
Nah, everything I took out I managed to put back in.
http://antennaweb.org/
Plug in your address and a few details and it will tell you what kind of antenna will work best for your location.
Just a Note to keep those hard drives running properly over time.
Hard Disk Warning!
For those of you who are archiving your products on hard disks, please pay close attention!
Recently, I was talking to an engineering manager of a well-known hard disk company discussing how we were supposed to archive tapeless media for the long-term.
Note: The company he works for is not important, because I've since corroborated this issue with two other hard disk companies. This is a hard disk issue, NOT a specific vendor issue.
Executive Summary
Magnetic signals recorded on a hard disk are designed to be refreshed periodically. If your hard disks stay on, this happens automatically. However, if you store your projects to a removable hard drive, then store that hard drive on a shelf, unattached to a computer, those magnetic signals will fade over time... essentially, evaporating.
According to what I've been told, the life-span of a magnetic s ignal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half. The issue is complex, as you'll see, but this is a MUCH shorter shelf-life than I was expecting.
The way to keep the files on your hard disks safe is to connect the hard drive to your computer every six months or so and, ideally, copy all the files from one drive to another. Failing that, use a program like Micromat's TechTool Pro, or ProSoft's Drive Genius, to do a complete scan of your hard drive. Doing so will replenish any magnetic signals that are starting to fade.
The Technical Details
The issue of magnetic fading has been a little-talked about concern in the hard disk industry for a while, but it is complex and simple answers are hard to find. Here are some comments that one engineer sent me that may help you understand this better.
This has been something that has come up over the years, in the quest for higher density hard drives, before we crossed the 1GB per drive barrier. At that time, there was concern because the earth's magnetic field could affect data integrity, and many measures were designed to compensate for this effect. A t that time and since, there was also concern for the magnetic charges on the disk platters.
Older mainframe storage systems continuously read each sector; this read automatically refreshed any sectors that were margina. Servo tracks are also embedded within the data tracks, so any signals out of margin were easily detectable. Loss of servo info would render the disk useless, as the controller would not know where the head really was on the disk surface.
Improvements have been made in head technology, media magnetic qualities, and recording techniques to make the data integrity less subject to outside influence, and to the fading of the magnetic encoded bits on the disk surface. Sort of like when cheap magnets eventually lose their magnetism. B etter materials deliver longer life.
So...in the interest of checking things out, simply reading every sector on a disk actually is preventative; if the controller within the disk detects any marginal data in either the servo tracks or the data bits recorded on the surface, the controller will automatically rewrite the data to the sector. If it cannot, this block is mapped out, again, automatically, and a substitute data block will be mapped in. All modern disks do this for you today. A simple read cycle of every sector or data block is all that is necessary.
In the 80's and early 90's this was NOT automatic, and that is where things like defragging and bad-block mapping were the norm. Today, a lot of this is done automatically for you by the d isc itself, or the file system manager in the OS. Things are constantly being moved around.
So, the scanning is simply reading every sector of the disk surface. The act of copying all the files from one disk to another disk would almost accomplish the same thing. With this latter method, unused parts of the disc would not be read again.
As for duration: I would say that the disks could lose data if not used for a long period of time. Doing this surface scan every year or two is preventative. It is hard to define a point in time when a failure due to degraded media occurs. I do have drives here that have not been spun up for several years, and they are fine, but I have heard from many who do have issues after leaving the drive in storage for sev eral years. Sometimes it is actual data fade; sometimes it is power supply related;
sometimes it is due to extremes in temperature or humidity.
All things age, some more gracefully that others.
Bottom line, revisiting your storage archives periodically is some assurance that what you have saved away is really still there. You know the old adage, the only thing worse than no backup, is a backup that can't be used.
Larry again. Frankly, I was stunned wi
total bs. i've got drives a decade old that still read just fine.
Magnetic signals recorded on a hard disk are designed to be refreshed periodically. If your hard disks stay on, this happens automatically.
only if the track is read and re-written
when you buy a 500 gb drive, it may for instance have 10s to 100s of megabytes of "spare" space available on it that isn't included in that 500gb. that space is there so that if a track on the drive becomes unusable, the data on that track can be dynamically reallocated to one of the spare tracks before it isn't recoverable anymore. most of the time you won't even know this has happened to the disc. if you have smart enabled, it may warn you that the disc is about to fail. in which case the correct solution is to buy a new disc and transfer all your data to that.
Older mainframe storage systems continuously read each sector; this read automatically refreshed any sectors that were margina.
oh that's funny. old mainframe discs were so slow if they spent time constantly reading each sector the wait time to get any real data from them would be enormous.
Servo tracks are also embedded within the data tracks,
so this sentence is true.
so any signals out of margin were easily detectable.
nope. its actually due to the following sentence and has nothing to do with detecting out of margin signals. its all about the location of the read/write head on the disc.
Loss of servo info would render the disk useless, as the controller would not know where the head really was on the disk surface.
second true tidbit of information.
A simple read cycle of every sector or data block is all that is necessary.
wrong. a read-write cycle is necessary to refresh any "weak" data. all reading it will do is determine whether a track is going bad.
so, as a whole the story is bs. however, doing a full read can be wise for the reason i mentioned above. finding a problem before its too late to do anything about it.
My home ZIP drive is practically virgin since I got a CD burner shortly after getting the ZIP, and both the disks and drive have been boxed up and stored well out of the elements.
Hard Drives should be sealed and out of touch with the elements, but can removable disks like ZIPs and JAZ disks become "oxidized" for lack of a better term and decay?
I think I read somewhere too that writeable CD media only holds up for a certain length of time as well.
I guess in general it would be good to go over old backups periodically (6 months to 2 years?) and write them to new media, if you're really concerned about it.
Shoot, if I keep getting things to fix, I might actually be able to start a business on my own.... :goofy:
I figerd a little more Orange or something lol!!! :eyeroll: :eyeroll:
and a little cleaner!!!!!
Besides. a cluttered desk is the sign of a brilliant mind, right? :sillygrin:
lol since my office allways had lots of wheels and moved every day!!! LOL :wink:
That would be true - if you can even FIND it amongst all that crap...
slowwwwww
sysop, "Miscellaneous Bugs" #565, 16 Oct 2008 11:16 am' target='_new'>Sysops reply - or just read below...
...Yeah there are server problems and we are trying to address the issues. I thought we were temporarily OK after restarting the site yesterday, but apparently that didn't help long enough. I just restarted the site again, but not sure if it will help. There seems to be multiple issues and one or more is with the actual Unix server. We will move the site to another server soon.
Doomsday is still a long way off - the bright light I just saw in the sky was only
Last night I quickly threw together a skeleton for the forum - I like the phpbb format as-is, but I want to do it advertising-free with no banner ads. What domain servers can do free forum hosting without annoying pop-ups or banner ads?
Townhome forum at Forumsland.com
I don't think this group will get too big for basic services - there just isn't enough people living here to overload content limits.
Here's one free developer I found: http://www.webringamerica.com/ - do you think they would work?