[Hooch Tan]

Originally Posted by Gerard

But the stuff I use it for cannot yet be done 'in the cloud' in large part, and even those things which could be done there I don't want to be done there owing to privacy concerns (I don't want my videos and still images to be shared unless by my intention, but there's abundant evidence no such expectation of privacy is justified when talking about social media sites, so why would cloud computing services be any different?), data loss concerns (if I lose a file, I usually have at least one spare copy on separate media because that's how I work - usually it's more like three distinct locations, five locations for my most important business data), and the simple desire to keep my stuff...

Hear hear! I'm all for owning ones own data, and I'd like to think I have most of the know how to do so. But most people apparently don't know, care, or want to spend the time in managing their own information, and are willing to give up a lot of privacy for that convenience. At least until they lose their data. Every so often, I hear complaints about losing access to their hotmail, gmail, even data on a CD or USB drive that has "expired". And questions about backups come up with a blank stare. *sigh*

Originally Posted by Gerard

Discussions like this are the most 'out there' form of my personhood in the computer realm. And remember 'back in the day' when Dale Coffing's pocketpcpassion.com was one of the busiest places for guys like us? Remember how RAID failed him and lost something over half a million posts? Remember how, after painfully time consuming and expensive attempts he failed to recover any of it, but rebuilt anyway and people came back and contributed masses of further discussion... which was then all lost in another year or so, in another sort of crash, in spite of much greater (Microsoft-supported) precautions being taken?

I don't recall the details surrounding the second crash, but to be fair, a RAID (RAID 1, 5, 1+0, etc) array is only intended to protect against hardware failure, not data corruption, which is what I believe happened in the first crash.

With regards to reliability, I believe it comes down cost, convenience and effort. No device is 100% reliable, so there's redundancy and backups. So you set up at least one backup. But how often do you test your backups? Admittedly, I don't, and I know I should. I've read horror stories where companies will have made the effort and extra cost for a backup system, but then never check to make sure it is working properly on a regular basis (which would cost them extra time and money as well) and then find out that they've been making blank backups for 6 months! At the consumer level, I just do not think most people are willing to go through all the necessary hoops to ensure that they don't lose one bit of their data. And they are not willing to pay the cost, even with cloud computing, that would require corporate or military spec reliability.

[Hooch Tan]

Originally Posted by Gerard

But the stuff I use it for cannot yet be done 'in the cloud' in large part, and even those things which could be done there I don't want to be done there owing to privacy concerns (I don't want my videos and still images to be shared unless by my intention, but there's abundant evidence no such expectation of privacy is justified when talking about social media sites, so why would cloud computing services be any different?), data loss concerns (if I lose a file, I usually have at least one spare copy on separate media because that's how I work - usually it's more like three distinct locations, five locations for my most important business data), and the simple desire to keep my stuff...

Hear hear! I'm all for owning ones own data, and I'd like to think I have most of the know how to do so. But most people apparently don't know, care, or want to spend the time in managing their own information, and are willing to give up a lot of privacy for that convenience. At least until they lose their data. Every so often, I hear complaints about losing access to their hotmail, gmail, even data on a CD or USB drive that has "expired". And questions about backups come up with a blank stare. *sigh*

Originally Posted by Gerard

Discussions like this are the most 'out there' form of my personhood in the computer realm. And remember 'back in the day' when Dale Coffing's pocketpcpassion.com was one of the busiest places for guys like us? Remember how RAID failed him and lost something over half a million posts? Remember how, after painfully time consuming and expensive attempts he failed to recover any of it, but rebuilt anyway and people came back and contributed masses of further discussion... which was then all lost in another year or so, in another sort of crash, in spite of much greater (Microsoft-supported) precautions being taken?

I don't recall the details surrounding the second crash, but to be fair, a RAID (RAID 1, 5, 1+0, etc) array is only intended to protect against hardware failure, not data corruption, which is what I believe happened in the first crash.

With regards to reliability, I believe it comes down cost, convenience and effort. No device is 100% reliable, so there's redundancy and backups. So you set up at least one backup. But how often do you test your backups? Admittedly, I don't, and I know I should. I've read horror stories where companies will have made the effort and extra cost for a backup system, but then never check to make sure it is working properly on a regular basis (which would cost them extra time and money as well) and then find out that they've been making blank backups for 6 months! At the consumer level, I just do not think most people are willing to go through all the necessary hoops to ensure that they don't lose one bit of their data. And they are not willing to pay the cost, even with cloud computing, that would require corporate or military spec reliability.

[Gerard]

Originally Posted by Hooch Tan

I don't recall the details surrounding the second crash, but to be fair, a RAID (RAID 1, 5, 1+0, etc) array is only intended to protect against hardware failure, not data corruption, which is what I believe happened in the first crash.

I don't know the exact details either, but yes, the initial failure was in large part due to treating RAID as though it were a backup solution. When both drives failed (in the same box I think), all was lost. The causes of the second crash remained, I think, a mystery to outsiders. Dale kind of disappeared after that, though he kept going to trade shows for some years.

Originally Posted by Hooch Tan

...But how often do you test your backups? Admittedly, I don't, and I know I should. I've read horror stories where companies will have made the effort and extra cost for a backup system, but then never check to make sure it is working properly on a regular basis (which would cost them extra time and money as well) and then find out that they've been making blank backups for 6 months! At the consumer level, I just do not think most people are willing to go through all the necessary hoops to ensure that they don't lose one bit of their data. And they are not willing to pay the cost, even with cloud computing, that would require corporate or military spec reliability.

Sadly, most computer users will one day experience some level of personal and/or business data loss due to hardware or software failures, or user error. Not much we can do about people deciding to walk in front of that particular bus, without becoming the same sort of babysitter Microsoft and Apple are in their different ways.

But I do mentioned it to people when it seems relevant, when I know they have data which is important to them and it seems they have not considered making at least one backup copy. And as I mentioned above, as I frequently say in such conversations both in and out of forums, entrusting one's information to the vagaries of a backup program (usually left with more or less default settings by most users, which usually means some sort of proprietary compression, subject to rendering data irrecoverable in cases of corruption) is foolishness. Hence the manual copy recommendation. It's slow, and needs a minute or two worth of thought, but really not very challenging and getting easier year by year as USB and wireless get faster as do drives, and as bigger drives become more affordable.

I know lots of people who keep all their family images and videos on one computer only, and make no backups of any sort. A half-terabyte external notebook drive now costs under $100. There is no practical excuse for such risks any more, when multiple copies of all our data can be put into such small drives, when it's practical to carry 500GB (okay, 460GB or so) in one's pocket most of the time without really noticing it (my Hitachi is really small and sleek), while leaving other copies at home and perhaps at a relative's house.

I 'test' my backups by going into them (always un-compressed - I've seen too many corrupt ZIP and RAR archives to risk using them any more) and opening a few dozen random files every few weeks or so, and I always keep at least the last two backups on any given media. Some media spin, but for my most important information I also use solid state cards. Don't bother with optical as I've seen too many bad writes there, but maybe just my bad luck with hardware. I could probably test more often, but so far GenieSoft Backup and manual copies have proven pretty reliable on my PCs (and my daughter's and my wife's) and Resco Backup and PIMBackup and manual copies the same on my phone.