A story of loss, anguish and recovery.

[Gir633]

I have all my IV and the like on an external hard drive, just over 900Gb saved up since the late 90's. At one time both JAV and IV were on the same drive, so I had main folders labeled such, then videos/picture sets each in their own sub-folder.
A bit ago I was going through the collection cleaning up the folder names to a common naming system, and finding a few duplicates. So after several hours of working on this, I'm deleting duplicate video sub-folders; deleat-ok, dekeat-ok many times when everything disappears. I had deleted the main folder, and so wiped out everything. I then went through the 5 stages of loss, and then I thought that there has to be a way to get it back if I don't overwrite anything.
So then I just set the drive aside and when I bought another HD that I needed I used Recuva to see if I could recover anything to the new drive. And lo and behold it looks like it recovered everything, at least as far as I can tell.
I guess I really need to pay more attention to those delete messages.

 

[CodeGeek]

Maybe you also should think about a backup. A 4 TB USB HDD doesn't cost that much nowadays, but can save lives ... eh... I mean movies.

 

[TravelingWind]

I know this feel...

I had 2 TB of it and then i accidentally tripped over the power cord and "BAM"

My world ended ...

 

[CoolKevin]

I know this feel...

I had 2 TB of it and then i accidentally tripped over the power cord and "BAM"

My world ended ...

ouch, I know the feeling well

 

[aquamarine]

I see you guys don't believe in using 'cloud storage'.... What a pity.
Then again, that coming from a person who has a 4-bay Q-NAP, two 2-bay HDD docks and -EVERYTHING- backed up both in a self-owned off-site storage location in another part of the world AND cloud-storage... well.. ya.

 

[CodeGeek]

I once had stored my precious on a RAID 5 system. Unfortunately one drive died without me noticing it. And later a second drive started to give me trouble. And some point I thought I lost everything. But I somehow got one of the drives working again - at least in a state where I could access the RAID 5 again. I copied all the data to some USB drives I bought for this. It took almost 2 months. And a few files were gone forever, but luckily no important ones. Now I have a RAID 6 and 2 sets of USB drives for the backup. I never wanted to experience that again.

 

[Casshern2]

Good grief! So glad for you, Gir633, that you were able to recover. Moments ago I updated my old Storage Wars thread here in the Chatterbox regarding storage. I have a 1TB nearing capacity and was asking about HDD vs Blank Media. aquamarine and CodeGeek, that RAID stuff has always been over my head. I'm sure it isn't as complicated as I think it is.

 

[CodeGeek]

RAID? Complicated? Not really. Especially when you use a ready-to-use NAS (like QNAP, Netgear, Bufallo). Just plug in some HDD (should be NAS compatible, so e.g. WD RED instead of WD Green), you through the assistant (some neat web user interface) and select the RAID level. Than maybe define a hot spare (I don't have one, but always a HDD for exchange in the shelf) and that's it. You're scared by the different RAID levels and the term "Hot spare"? It sounds more complicated than it really is.

 

[isityours]

services like cytrix really are the way to go if you consider the cost of buying even one hard drive a year. if you have more than 2 or 3 hard drives (which many of us do) then we are probably purchasing 1 hard drive a year just to keep those 3 drives maintained on a once in 3 year rotation. continuous off-site storage is the only way to guarantee your precious collection/work product's safety. you can have all the RAIDS/hot or cold backups you want but it will do nothing for you in the event of fire etc. also, lack of disk drive maintenance is the leading cause of failure. using a program like spinrite will guarantee you will be able to get out in front of malfunctioning drives and save a headache in the future.
ive yet to loose a drive so i cant sympathize but i can imagine what it would be like.

 

[Casshern2]

But would blank media be just a bad idea?

 

[CodeGeek]

But would blank media be just a bad idea?

I tried that back when I watched Anime. And it was too cumbersome. And the media taking too much space. I haven't yet calculated the costs of HDD and blank media, but I wouldn't be surprised if HDD is even cheaper (set aside the electricity costs).

So far I never experienced a DVD or CD which couldn't be read anymore because of the ravages of time. So far the only died because of external influences. But I experiences a few HDD dying just because the had a defect before or they simply ran for too long.

You see: I can't give you a definitive answer. But I chose the HDD way.

 

[Casshern2]

Thanks so much CodeGeek. As always I appreciate your opinion.

 

[CodeGeek]

Thanks so much CodeGeek. As always I appreciate your opinion.

Thanks for the compliment.

 

[Casshern2]

@isityours, do you mean Citrix? My thing about cloud storage is that you spend unnecessary bandwidth (in my opinion) just to get at things you could have on-hand. But I know that many industries are headed toward it. Not sure if I'd trust my collection to it, though.

Thanks for your insight. I'll give DVD storage a go for a bit to see how that plays out. Depending on size you can probably store 3-5 SD or Mini-JAV titles on a standard single layer disc.

 

[aquamarine]

I haven't used Citrix, I have however used Carbonite (not that great) and currently use CrashPlan which, white not speedy, is secure and has been useful so far. Plus it has an app that lets you access your files via your phone, if need be.

 

[Casshern2]

@aquamarine, I've hard of Carbonite, but not CrashPlab. How do those companies handle privacy? Are they like having a Swiss bank account? They don't or are not required to check content of what is being stored? Or can they be subject to DMCA takedowns? Just curious.

 

[isityours]

yeah, i meant carbonite (and citrix). i actually thought citrix did carbonite, hence the confusion. yeah, it does use a lot of bandwidth. especially if you are dealing with a cap. but it can be set to run during downtime.

no need to worry about these companies privacy policies or whatever because they will always comply with DCMA etc if issued with one. just pre-encrypt, then you dont need to be picky. even if you do find a responsible, honest provider you should encrypt anyway.

dont forget that DVDs have a half-life of 5-10 years. and they cant be refreshed like hard disks so once data degrades, its gone.

 

[aquamarine]

You are right, Carbonite is FROM Citrix. The last time I used it was in 2009 and didn't enjoy the services of accessibility. I have been happily using Crashplan now though. As for privacy, all files are encrypted which is a plus, however I do not suggest uploading anything illegal JUST in-case... but then again, uploading illegal shit like kiddie-porn etc is just fucking dumb to begin with.

Anyway, the files ARE encrypted so that even CrashPlan can't snoop on you.

The other side of things is that it does take a while to upload your original full batch of data if you have a lot, but once it's up, the only time it makes use of heavy data is when you make a massive change to a file you've already uploaded -OR- are uploading something new. Your side of things 'pings' the server to see if the mirrored files are correct in size, and if not, then it will upload the newest version. The other little issue I had is the length it takes to upload... 16TB of data took just over 5 months... but that said, it was all transferring from Tokyo across the pond to servers in New York.

 

[isityours]

sorry, just to be clear, i was referring to encryption of the files to be uploaded before even introducing them into the backup software. this is the only way to be sure that the files are encrypted securely and inaccessible to anyone except you.

5 months. thats crazy! you could have a disk fail on you in that time. i have never used any online backup services myself so i cant give any first-hand advice but googles services apparently got a whole lot cheaper a while back.

As for privacy, all files are encrypted which is a plus, however I do not suggest uploading anything illegal JUST in-case...
...Anyway, the files ARE encrypted so that even CrashPlan can't snoop on you.

The other side of things is that it does take a while to upload your original full batch of data if you have a lot, but once it's up, the only time it makes use of heavy data is when you make a massive change to a file you've already uploaded -OR- are uploading something new. Your side of things 'pings' the server to see if the mirrored files are correct in size, and if not, then it will upload the newest version. The other little issue I had is the length it takes to upload... 16TB of data took just over 5 months... but that said, it was all transferring from Tokyo across the pond to servers in New York.

 

[rnishimura]

I have a 8tb raid 1 setup and then back that up to to a remote cloud server daily ($2402/month.) I then manually back it up every 72 hours and store it in a vault (7" fire proof walls)inside my bunker.
Oh and it's just porn.