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What annoyed you today?

Started by greypoint, August 13, 2009, 07:52:26 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

anglefire

Thats pathetic- it sounds like dropbox - ideal for photosharing, but useless as a backup.

I use livedrive - not free, by any stretch, but works well - I have 2.9Tb uploaded at the moment - its only my offline backup, I have local NAS backup too :)
----------------------------------
Mark
* A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE - THE SHORT STORY* 'Hydrogen is a light, odourless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.'

CPS Gold Member
My Website

Current Bodies:
Canon 1Dx
Canon R3
Canon R5

Sold Bodies:
Canon 350D
Canon 1DMk3
Canon 5D
Canon 1Dx Mk3

Paul Montgomery

I might look into that. I really need to sort out an off-line backup ASAP...

Alfonso_Frisk

Serious Question.
Can someone explain the real advantages to using an online backup system ?
External hard drives are so cheap now and have massive capacity, so much so you can have a back up of a back up if your that way inclined.
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/nosmo_king2007
http://www.seateamimages.com/search.php
Wine improves with age, The older I get the more I like it.

Hinfrance

I don't really hold with these new fangled cloudy things. Not since Carbonite lost the data from thousands of clients, and not given that there is probably not enough time until the end of the universe to upload my photo and music files at the upload speed we have out here in the sticks.

I keep two copies of my data - one on a drive next to the PC, and the other on a drive in a fireproof safe. I back up about once a fortnight.
Howard  My CC Gallery
My Flickr
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil. H.L Mencken.

StephenBatey

Quote from: Alfonso_Frisk on November 30, 2016, 10:10:33 AM
Serious Question.
Can someone explain the real advantages to using an online backup system ?
External hard drives are so cheap now and have massive capacity, so much so you can have a back up of a back up if your that way inclined.

I suspect two reasons:

1. If your house burns down/is stripped by thieves/goes underwater in the next floods (add your own disaster scenario) then you have an off site backup that won't be affected.

2. Wherever you are, you always have your data available. If you have an internet connection at reasonable speed, of course.

Both income tax and lockdowns were introduced as temporary measures by the government.

Alfonso_Frisk

Hmmm, still not convinced  :)
So the places where the server "clouds" are based never catch fire, have floods, have thefts (cyber or physical) etc, etc, ?
One thing they will have  is human interaction/management. Prone to error and incompetence outside of my own similar failings.
Therefore I will take my chances with my own photographs etc   ;) ;)
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/nosmo_king2007
http://www.seateamimages.com/search.php
Wine improves with age, The older I get the more I like it.

StephenBatey

Quote from: Alfonso_Frisk on November 30, 2016, 09:33:39 PM
Hmmm, still not convinced  :)

You and me both! You merely asked what arguments could be made in favour of cloud storage, and those were the only ones I could think of. I don't trust them for the reasons you gave, plus the uncertainty that they will continue to exist.

I'll stick with my own system. It is at least possible to assess the risks intelligently; once the data goes into the cloud it's all a bit nebulous (by definition?)  ;D
Both income tax and lockdowns were introduced as temporary measures by the government.

Paul Montgomery

For me, its exactly the 2 reasons Stephen gave. I've now got a backup available if I get burgled or the house burns etc.
Of course, other places could catch fire/ have disk crashes etc, but I would expect them to h have backup routine and I'd have to be spectacularly unlucky for them to go down at the same time as me...

Reinardina

I distrusted cloud storage instinctively, right from the start, even before I started to think about it properly; maybe because I regularly stay in places without, or with a very slow internet connection.

I also cannot get the thought out of my head, that 'anyone' (with the right technical know how) could get at it.
__________________
Reinardina.

Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.
Shakespeare. (Love's Labours Lost.)

StephenBatey

Quote from: Paul Montgomery on December 01, 2016, 07:46:05 PM
I would expect them to have a backup routine and I'd have to be spectacularly unlucky for them to go down at the same time as me...

I'd expect them to have one too; but what it is, and how effective it is, I don't know. The sheer amount of data must present a major problem. If they use RAID arrays and have extra RAID arrays on site, then they are susceptible to flood/fire/earthquake wiping out the lot. If they transfer the data off site, then it would take a fair amount of cabling to provide the transfer, or a high grade internet connection to use the internet. I spent twenty years programming mainframes, and the system we used was to have all the data written daily onto magnetic tapes which were stored off site. When the tapes were taken to the storage facility (actually rented space in railway arches around the corner from the Southwark Street office) the oldest generation tapes were brought back for re-use. In theory, we had at least three generations stored in the event of problems.

One question that a columnist in the computer press used to raise was "how do you know you have a backup?", the idea being that unless you attempted a restore you had no reason to believe that you had anything at all. This isn't just an idle speculation. Tape drives were reliable, and could verify the data written - this worked by having a read head positioned after the write head, and reading back the data just written to compare it. As to what happened when the hardware mechanism failed and reported all was well when it wasn't... It did happen. We found that the mechanism on one tape drive had developed a problem, and the data wasn't being written but was being reported as written correctly. This was picked up before we needed to use a backup, but there was a period when we effectively had no backups.

As to being spectacularly unlucky, that would depend on where in the world you are, and where the cloud storage is located. I suspect that some areas of the world could conceivably be affected on a large scale (earthquakes in Japan, sunamis etc.) that could affect client and cloud.
Both income tax and lockdowns were introduced as temporary measures by the government.

Hinfrance

I can't see any harm in having a cloud backup. As long as it isn't being relied upon. I see it as a kind of backup backup option.
Howard  My CC Gallery
My Flickr
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil. H.L Mencken.

Oldboy

Quote from: StephenBatey on December 02, 2016, 01:36:11 PM
Quote from: Paul Montgomery on December 01, 2016, 07:46:05 PM
I would expect them to have a backup routine and I'd have to be spectacularly unlucky for them to go down at the same time as me...

I'd expect them to have one too; but what it is, and how effective it is, I don't know. The sheer amount of data must present a major problem. If they use RAID arrays and have extra RAID arrays on site, then they are susceptible to flood/fire/earthquake wiping out the lot. If they transfer the data off site, then it would take a fair amount of cabling to provide the transfer, or a high grade internet connection to use the internet. I spent twenty years programming mainframes, and the system we used was to have all the data written daily onto magnetic tapes which were stored off site. When the tapes were taken to the storage facility (actually rented space in railway arches around the corner from the Southwark Street office) the oldest generation tapes were brought back for re-use. In theory, we had at least three generations stored in the event of problems.

One question that a columnist in the computer press used to raise was "how do you know you have a backup?", the idea being that unless you attempted a restore you had no reason to believe that you had anything at all. This isn't just an idle speculation. Tape drives were reliable, and could verify the data written - this worked by having a read head positioned after the write head, and reading back the data just written to compare it. As to what happened when the hardware mechanism failed and reported all was well when it wasn't... It did happen. We found that the mechanism on one tape drive had developed a problem, and the data wasn't being written but was being reported as written correctly. This was picked up before we needed to use a backup, but there was a period when we effectively had no backups.

As to being spectacularly unlucky, that would depend on where in the world you are, and where the cloud storage is located. I suspect that some areas of the world could conceivably be affected on a large scale (earthquakes in Japan, sunamis etc.) that could affect client and cloud.

Most data doesn't need to be backed up on a regular basis as you only need to back up that which has changed. We used TMF , Transaction Monitoring Facility, which recorded every change to the data and was dumped to tape throughout the day. We also used RDF, Remote Data Facility which was sent to another site throughout the day. Every couple of years, we would run updates from the RDF site just to prove that it worked as it should. On one occasion when a database was corrupted we used TMF to restore it to before the corruption occurred. It took four days and during the time no updates or changes could be made to the data. There were a lot of people sweating, if we had failed to restore the data our company would have lost over two million pounds in interest.

When the system was originally set up a tape was used to back it up and was known as the god tape. It hung in the tape library for years and people were told not to touch it. After our system was ported to South Yorkshire they decided to test this tape to see if it was readable and it wasn't!  :o

Also, we had a Halon fire system which should have triggered if there was a fire. They triggered it, after the data centre was closed, and it didn't work!  :o :doh:

Companies like Google store their data in huge data centres on different continents, so if the worse happens it shouldn't be affected.  8)

anglefire

I view my cloud backup as just that - a backup of my local backup. A fire safe if you will. As for security, as long as the data center uses high levels of security, then all should be good - and they normally backup to other data centers themselves to cover disasters.

My local backup to my NAS drives works on changes, as does the Livebackup. I did try a cheaper one - that was US based and it was as slow as a dog.
----------------------------------
Mark
* A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE - THE SHORT STORY* 'Hydrogen is a light, odourless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.'

CPS Gold Member
My Website

Current Bodies:
Canon 1Dx
Canon R3
Canon R5

Sold Bodies:
Canon 350D
Canon 1DMk3
Canon 5D
Canon 1Dx Mk3

Reinardina

Popped into one of the local O2 shops, to top up my pay as you up mobile, and was asked for my name!
__________________
Reinardina.

Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.
Shakespeare. (Love's Labours Lost.)

Oldboy

Quote from: Reinardina on December 16, 2016, 01:54:51 PM
Popped into one of the local O2 shops, to top up my pay as you up mobile, and was asked for my name!

Perhaps he was looking for a date!  :-*

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