[Leica] Computer help!!!

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

I was about to go out to the darkroom when I read your post: Now I'm 
hurrying out there. This is not the first time I've had problems: we 
have huge servers storing the digital files for our radiology 
practices. The recent work is stored on Raid, which as far as I can 
tell is just linked external hard drives, and backed up on juke box DVD 
stores. It takes longer to "retrieve" an image from the DVD, so we keep 
the raid big enough to hold 6 months of work. In reality, it takes an 
IT department and the backing of Siemens to keep it going, so its not a 
part time home job for the like of someone like me.

Tina, you may need to simplify your digital expectations. I know this 
sounds twee, but storage of files and their maintenence is a full time 
job, and you should be out doing yours, not fiddling with computers. 
Ted would say KISS. I have decided to store much of my files on the 
internet. This places the work of servers etc on the company rather 
than on me. It stores it off site, away from fires at my house, and by 
a quirk always means that the files are available anywhere in the 
world. My lectures and study files are backed up this way and I'm 
leaning toward more of the image files going the same way. It may be 
expensive but sometimes a dollar spent is 10 dollars saved.

Cheers
On 21/08/2005, at 10:55 AM, Tina Manley wrote:

> Dear LUG:
>
> I am depending on you, especially Brian, to save my sanity.  My 
> computer has crashed once again.  I have in my closet 6 Maxtor 250 GB 
> hard drives that have failed.  Dell keeps replacing them and they are 
> all under warranty which is great, but I have weeks worth of work 
> invested in each one.  I have backed them up religiously with 
> Retrospect and, when that failed, with Norton Ghost.  The back-up 
> files were stored in Lacie external hard drives - one of 120 GB and 
> the other 400 GB (which I have since discovered are only Maxtors in a 
> pretty case!!).  They would not show up in any search at first but now 
> show up under Norton with no files at all.  Dell finally replaced the 
> motherboard with the last failure and I thought everything would be 
> o.k.  One week ago, after returning from the Middle Ease, I got the 
> blue screen of death.  Nothing would work.  The disk diagnostic test 
> says that the disks pass but Windows won't load.  Dell says that it is 
> a software problem and sent out a Service Pack 2 for Windows XP.  The 
> only problem is that you have to reformat the hard drives and lose 
> everything to install it!!!  I had weeks' worth of work on two 250 GB 
> hard drives so I took those out of the computer and installed new 
> Western Digital hard drives (which I bought!!) to install the new 
> Windows XP, SP2.   I've been working on this for a week.  The new 
> installation will not recognize my internet connections so I am 
> working on my laptop.  I've ordered some external hard drive cases to 
> hook my old SATA hard drives up through the USB port and will 
> hopefully be able recover everything on my old hard drives.  If not, 
> you will hear me scream.
>
> What I want to know is how to avoid these problems in the future.  
> I've read about RAID systems, but I have no idea what they are or 
> whether they would help.  Is there a tutorial about RAID?   I will 
> have internal hard drives of 300GB and 250GB (both Western Digital)  
> and external hard drives of 120GB and 400GB (Lacie) and 300GB Western 
> Digital.   In the closet I have 6 250GB Maxtor hard drives that fail 
> the diagnostic test.  I've backed all of my digital files up on DVDs 
> so I haven't lost those, but slide shows and videos that I've worked 
> weeks on have possibly disappeared.  I'm tired of spending all of my 
> time on computers instead of photography.  Right now I have a rescue 
> program trying to recover the tiff files on one of the corrupt hard 
> drives.  It has 1560 minutes to go.
>
> AARRGHHH!!  I am retiring before I pull all of my hair out.  Can 
> anybody offer any solutions?
>
> Leically,
>
> Tina
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>
Alastair