Today’s rant:
Blog post for Tuesday January 11th, 2011
I have been wrestling with data storage all the time I have used computers.
The very first time I had a hard drive crash and lost the great novel of my life I vowed to figure out better ways of keeping this stuff safe.
That great novel? Probably not so great. But the world will never know.
Because I am old in terms of using computers I have used all sorts of media to back up data.
Cassettes sucked
The Floppy Disc Family-flopsy mopsy and 3.5 incher
At one point I had at least 500 3.5 inch floppy discs.
Zip Drive, Remember these?
And of course the now ubiquitous:
I have at least five of these. More depending on how many my students leave behind in the computer lab.
None of these are particularly useful in the event of hard drive catastrophe. Sure the thumb drive will save files, but no scheme I have found will also save all your settings and your software. Getting a new machine up to speed consumes lots of time. Trust me, I have just done this and spent the better part of a day getting this new lap-top I am pounding away on going to my specs. Maybe if pounded a little less it would last?
I am working on a project that requires me to edit and clean up large audio files. These were transferred from cassettes of various quality and dubious origins to CD. I have had to take hiss and hum out, edit content and equalize them, and in a few cases adjust the speed to make the speakers sound less like Alvin and the Chipmunks or Lurch.
To share these I am using a gift from Bill Gates:
Skydrive Thanks Bill!
If you are not familiar with Skydrive its a component of the Windows Hotmail service. Bill GIVES you 25 gigbytes of storage space.
Plus you can drop files into a public area:
Skydrive for public
and just give out the url to the people you want to share it with. Kind of like an FTP deal, but free and easy.
Of course my client resisted and did not get it, but his web person did and that’s all that matters, right?
Technology marches on.
Today’s rant is from this time of year in 2008. It’s one of a few I have written about the subject. I hope you enjoy it. As always, thanks for reading!
