It's Alive!

[Comicality]

Well, not entirely...but sort of!

 

As announced before, I had a great deal of work on an external hard drive...which was supposed to be my back up just in case something crashed on my rapidly failing laptop. Then...the external hard drive crashed for no discernible reason at all...and my stuff was locked on it.

 

Well, after WEEKS of trying to repair it, I got it to work for a few brief periods of time. And the last time I was smart enough to grab my stories, music, templates, ebook stuff, etc off of it before it went bonkers on me again! So that just happened early this morning, and I have been working to rebuild the malfunctioning issues all morning. It's taken longer than I was expecting, but I'm still working on it as you read this.

 

Anyway, that means that all of my hard work is accessible again! And that will be good news for all of us this Easter weekend!

 

That being said, give me a chance to get the Comsie magic rolling again...and I'll seezya soon!

 

I wish I could say Mo' money, mo' problems...but, dammit, I don't have the money either! LOL!

 

Seezya!

[ricky]

Das ist zer GOOT! But did you save Vat "I" like to read?! "A Class by Imsevf!"

[MarcW]

the joys of computers ... they work for ages .. then all of a sudden ... lets fuck up ... sometimes if you are lucky they just come back to life (a bit like my imac .. no power up .. leave it unplugged for a week then bong ! .. alive !)  now everything is on one of four nas units ... if hard drive fails replace it & all is still there ... magic !

[Former Member]

Comicality says:

 

Anyway, that means that all of my hard work is accessible again! And that will be good news for all of us this Easter weekend!

 

That being said, give me a chance to get the Comsie magic rolling again...and I'll seezya soon!

 

 

 

Comsie! You can't know how happy I (and probably all of the rest of your readers) are that we can once again look forward to more from you.. the hard part is.... which story will you work on next.  Tough choice, I know because in my humble opinion, they're all fantastic!

 

I look forward to reading more about Billy, Taryn, Brandon, Tanner, and all of the other's you so skilfully portray for us!

 

True/Lenny

Edited April 3, 2015 by Atruefan

[dallen50]

Yea!! Missed you and your stories!!

[JamesSavik]

Tell you how I do back ups:

 

I have two external hard drives that are exactly alike (1.5 TB Western Digital).

 

I use one of them all the time. Then, Every week or so I dump it onto my second drive.

 

I also keep a 32GB thumb drive that I dump all my document files on.

 

When you are fighting the demon Murphy, you have to use every trick you've got.

Edited April 4, 2015 by jamessavik

[Comicality]

Thanx, you guys! And not only do I have my stuff back, but a new laptop to work with on top of it! So things are about to kick into high gear now!

 

As for technology, yeah...I keep thinking of it as something 'real'. Like...I figure, unless I throw my hard drive down a flight of steps, get it soaked in the rain, or deliberately do something to BREAK it...then it should work. And that's never the case. They just break for no reason. And everybody's answer is always, "Just get another one and start all over again." WHAT??? NO! They make us buy this shit, it should work! LOL! What the hell is that? Where does that mentality come from?

 

If somebody's house burns to the ground due to faulty wiring, you can't just say, "Get a new house and replace all of your cherished possessions. Next time...get THREE houses, so you have a back up house to move into in case one gets destroyed." Hehehe, you now they just do that to keep us wasting money, right? Just saying...

 

Anyway, lesson learned...again, the hard way.

[Gene Splicer PHD]

It breaks because it's cheap stuff. A 2 terabyte drive for 50 bucks? Good for maybe a year. MAYBE. People think they get a great deal because they didn't pay much AND it's all the same stuff anyway, who cares who made it?

 

Yeah, that'll cost you.

 

Pro tip: when you (I mean the global you here, not just Comsie) buy an item as critical as a backup drive, look for drive reliability. Look in the specs for a long warranty, like 3+ years. That indicates a better-than-average drive in terms of quality.

 

Here's a link to a blog post by a tech at Backblaze. They do online backups, and currently have about 35,000 hard drives running 24/7. They know a little bit about which ones fail most: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

 

Okay so you might pay 50 or $100 more for for a good drive. So what? What's the cost of losing the data that's stored on it?

 

One thing I've learned over a long time fixing computers for a living: It's not the cost of the gear, it's the loss you face when it doesn't work. People never seem to take this to heart.

 

And manufacturers know this. There's a big, big difference in the quality of the gear you get at a Best Buy or a Microcenter or a Fry's, and the price point is where the rubber hits the road. They'll sell you the cheapest crap they can because YOU'LL BUY IT.

 

Do some research beyond looking in the weekly flyer, and buy stuff that will last or consistently work based on history and reviews. Don't look at the price.

 

If more people did this, I'd be (happily) out of the business of trying to recover data from shitty equipment.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Gene Splicer PHD

[JamesSavik]

If more people did this, I'd be (happily) out of the business of trying to recover data from shitty equipment.

 

 

Shssh! A geek has gotta make a living you know.