PC Tech Thread

Hmm could be better off doing a clean install.

Thinking off the top of my head this is all I'd have to install;

ASUS - P8 P67 - Drivers (could be on disk)
Saffire 6870 - Drivers
AVG anti virus
Lightroom
Chrome
Sigma DP1 Software
Dropbox
Steam - On another drive but does that affect an OS install at all?
Real Temp

So ordered a 1350VA UPS because SF has a habit of having power drops ( bad elec infrastructure, wiring, storms, earth quakes ). Jacked it in, seems the building is running at 123volt (not 110).

Bought a CyberPower 1350PFCLCD ... not bad for $180. It's not totally pure sine wave, but it's not stepped either. Works fine with Active PSU's.

So still thinking about back up's to my PC. I'm starting to think that one of my HDD may have died.

Is it just a case of buying an external drive? Or would another internal drive behave exactly the same?

Starting to think NAS could be over kill - but then I know nothing about this.

So still thinking about back up's to my PC. I'm starting to think that one of my HDD may have died.

Is it just a case of buying an external drive? Or would another internal drive behave exactly the same?

Starting to think NAS could be over kill - but then I know nothing about this.

I've just gone for a NAS, configured RAID 1 so no more backup worries... We can also do away with dropbox accounts as I've set it us as cloud storage... works a treat!

Your NAS has two drives and they are mirrored?

Thing is I've never had back up before. Apart from saving all my documents to Dropbox by default now.

I reckon 1tb would be enough now but I don't know where to start... Do I just go out and buy a 1tb hdd?

Only if you want to have to remember to copy your files to it all the time.

I use a NAS and schedule automatic backups and a manual backup now and then to a HDD.

OK so I can't just remember to use an external drive as my only photo drive?

Eh? We are talking about a backup drive aren't we? As in, a copy of the precious data that's on your current hard drive.

Oh I see what you mean.

My bad, I'm being thick.

I'll buy a 1tb internal and 1tb external and make sure they mirror each other- best approach right?

I use bitcasa for cloud backups ... I used to store locally as well, but 99usd for "unlimited" storage seemed a good idea.
Also it has dropbox functionality too

If you decide to try it out, here's a link http://l.bitcasa.com/iNITHBLJ
Please use for referral, you'll get 1 month free :)

Hmm seems like a good idea although the price of that would soon add up. What happens when your playing around with raw files too?

Hmmm so got home this evening and my photos drive was on my computer but I couldn't open it. Turns out it was Raw format god knows why.

Oh the irony if I'd have backed it up I could have formatted and lifted from the backup.

Now I've got a program running to try and recover files from raw state. Only 105 hours left...

sure the price does add up, but then again it's cheaper than multi-redundancy raid-array hosted in a datacenter!

It does appear just as a normal drive on your system but it can be a little "behind". I have my photograph folder marked "mirror" so it just keeps it in sync without me having to do anything. Set and forget.

Currently have about 130gig stored there. It's really just piece of mind that I wont lose 10 years of photo's (which I do have mirrored at home as well).

hah, yeah I had a close scare where my drive "failed" with all my photos on it.
managed to get teh stuff off, and then discovered the drive had not actually failed nor was there a problem with it. Rather the cheap shit usb cable I was using was providing insignificant power to the drive. New USB cable and all's good.

Still, I don't care now as every time a file gets written to my photo dir, it's autobacked up in the cloud

Currently running Photorec to try and recover the files.

I apparently have 973 hours left - surely this can't be right?

Any quick way to read files when the drive is in RAW format?

Your NAS has two drives and they are mirrored?

yep 2 x 4tb

Am I able to build/ buy a cheaper NAS than this;

Zyxel NSA320 2-Bay Power NAS Appliance - 62.98
WD 2TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive 84.99 x2

Total - 232.97

Seems like a decent price right?

Other choice is I go for a single drive NAS ala - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/zyxel-nsa310-1-bay-500gb-1x-500gb-nas-drive-for-59-98-ebuyer-1568479

And put in a 3tb drive? Then partition it 1.5tb for films and other for pictures.

Or in terms of value for money - is this best?

http://www.ebuyer.com/394447-d-link-dns-320-sharecenter-pulse-2-bay-no-disks-nas-enclosure-dns-320-2tbr

Opinions please people.

How much do you need to backup? How important is it?

The cheap HP Microsever deals are back on.

£200 with a £100 cashback from HP. I've got one acting as an HTPC at the moment.

http://www.cclonline.com/product/108949/704941-421/Branded-Servers/HP-ProLiant-G7-MicroServer/SRV0383/

Back up is of up most importance really. It'll be all our family photos. Was hoping to use the other drive for DVD rips too.

At the moment space is only around 500gb for the pictures, but I'd like to future proof somewhat and also as said above possibly use the other drive for DVD rips.

Having read this security notice and the recommendation that "You should access the site via https:// if you value the sanctity of your PMs and identity on LFGSS.", I thought I was covered as I use the HTTPS Everywhere extension in Firefox.

However, looking in the address bar, LFGSS is just addressed as "http://www.", whereas when I, for example, log in to Googlemail it is addressed "https://".

Que passe?

Type https:// in front of the www.

HTTPS everywhere does not work for every site - you may need to add the lfgss.com to the config file.

lfgss.xml

[code]



[/code]

Am I able to build/ buy a cheaper NAS than this;

Zyxel NSA320 2-Bay Power NAS Appliance - 62.98
WD 2TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive 84.99 x2

Total - 232.97

Seems like a decent price right?

Other choice is I go for a single drive NAS ala - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/zyxel-nsa310-1-bay-500gb-1x-500gb-nas-drive-for-59-98-ebuyer-1568479

And put in a 3tb drive? Then partition it 1.5tb for films and other for pictures.

Or in terms of value for money - is this best?

http://www.ebuyer.com/394447-d-link-dns-320-sharecenter-pulse-2-bay-no-disks-nas-enclosure-dns-320-2tbr

Opinions please people.

Still none the wiser. Any ideas people?

Should my 2 drives on the NAS mirror each other or am I OK to use all the storage?