Shopsmith Forums

no matter what I do.

A while back, I lost the hard drives in my computer. After recovery, I implemented what I thought would be a reliable and safe backup system.

Since I use three different computers, in different locations, I made the decision to store all of my Sketchup files on a flash drive. By doing this, they are easily moved from one location to another and are no longer as vulnerable to a computer crash as they were on the hard drive. So all my Sketchup files and a few other frequently used files are safe on the memory stick.

WRONG!

I knocked, yes knocked, the memory stick out of the front of my computer. This was the storage point for nearly all of the work that I have done using Sketchup.

You know the rest.:(:(

dusty wrote:no matter what I do.

A while back, I lost the hard drives in my computer. After recovery, I implemented what I thought would be a reliable and safe backup system.

Since I use three different computers, in different locations, I made the decision to store all of my Sketchup files on a flash drive. By doing this, they are easily moved from one location to another and are no longer as vulnerable to a computer crash as they were on the hard drive. So all my Sketchup files and a few other frequently used files are safe on the memory stick.

WRONG!

I knocked, yes knocked, the memory stick out of the front of my computer. This was the storage point for nearly all of the work that I have done using Sketchup.

You know the rest.:(:(

So VERY VERY sorry!

If there is anything that you sent me that I can email back to help rebuild / restore your files, please let me know.

Ben

Sign up for DropBox. You get 2GB of online "cloud" storage for free. You can pay and get more. That has replaced a lot of my need for a flash drive.

It's not necessary, but you can install a small program on your PC that makes your DropBox look like a folder on your computer. Copy files to that folder, they get uploaded to your DropBox. Access files on your DropBox just like they were in a folder on your PC.

Optional apps for Android and iOS let you access your DropBox storage with your smartphone or tablet.

Storage is private, but you also get a "public" folder that you can put files in and can then give people a web link to that file so they can access it. (Nobody but you, the DropBox people, and the NSA can access what is in your private DropBox folders).

There are also competing similar products from Box.com, Microsoft (Skydrive - soon to be renamed following a lawsuit in Germany), and others. But I find DropBox the easiest to use as it integrates so flawlessly with my PC and mobile devices.

My digital pictures, which are my most precious digital files and I have many many GBs of, are synced between 2 hard drives in my computer plus periodically get backed up to 2 DVD-R discs. One I keep in my desk at home, one I keep in my desk at work.

dusty wrote:no matter what I do.

A while back, I lost the hard drives in my computer. After recovery, I implemented what I thought would be a reliable and safe backup system.

Since I use three different computers, in different locations, I made the decision to store all of my Sketchup files on a flash drive. By doing this, they are easily moved from one location to another and are no longer as vulnerable to a computer crash as they were on the hard drive. So all my Sketchup files and a few other frequently used files are safe on the memory stick.

WRONG!

I knocked, yes knocked, the memory stick out of the front of my computer. This was the storage point for nearly all of the work that I have done using Sketchup.

You know the rest.:(:(

I highly recommend getting a Dropbox account. They are free for up to 2GB, and are much more secure and convenient than a flash drive. You can link as many PC's, iOS, and Android devices as you want to your account. Anything that you put in your Dropbox directory, on any device, gets backed up to the cloud (actually a big Amazon server, I understand) and also replicated to all of your other linked devices.

So if one of your devices dies, your data is still on all the others. They all die? No problem -- they are still on that big server, and you can access them from any web browser. It's also a great way to share large files.

Check it out here. I almost never use a flash drive anymore.

(Bonus: If you are interested in a Dropbox account, you can PM me your email address. I'll give you a referral, and then we'll each get an additional 500MB of free space. )

I installed a separate hard drive hooked up to Time Machine on my mac. It automatically backs up everything changed on a schedule of time you can set.

Sorry about your significant loss, Dusty, but with 3 computers you are probably better off using a cloud approach. If you have a mac you can update all your computers, iPhone, iPad all at the same time.

I, personally, chose to stay out of the 'cloud.'

Forrest

'knocked out of the computer'.

Broke something in the process?

Caused it to write incorrectly making access seem impossible?

FWIW backup rule #1 - Never only have a single backup and always have duplicates in different geographical locations.

#2 never use 'backup' for typical 'normal' activity.



Any chance the memory chip(s) is(are) still viable?


I do hope we can get it all back!

heathicus wrote:Sign up for DropBox. You get 2GB of online "cloud" storage for free. You can pay and get more. That has replaced a lot of my need for a flash drive.

Heath, (and the rest of you) Gmail is now 15+ GB for each account. Still free.

steve

skou wrote:Heath, (and the rest of you) Gmail is not 15+ GB for each account. Still free.

steve

True. But it's just much more clunky than Dropbox.

benush26 wrote:So VERY VERY sorry!

If there is anything that you sent me that I can email back to help rebuild / restore your files, please let me know.

Ben

Thank you so very much for that offer.

Yes, to anyone of you that I have emailed Sketchup documents to, I would much appreciate a return email of those documents. I had not even thought about those files.

Please, no lectures about backing up computer files. I know all of that. I have been issuing those same lectures for years. When my kids and grandkids hear about this, I will get all of the lectures I can endure. I will also be subjected to at least two of them rolling on the floor and laughing.

One bit of advice I have for anyone who has a hard drive, flash drive, photo card, or other similar memory device fail or accidentally get partially (or completely) deleted...don't continue to use it or in any way write to it. The memory is all still there in virtually every case - even when you delete things from a drive or memory device, it doesn't actually erase the data but rather opens up the given sectors to be written to - ie the info is still there but it tells itself it's free space and can be written over. There are tons of recovery programs available that can rescue this data, but not if you write over it first. I recently had a photo card from my digital camera at work fail upon trying to download...it showed nothing but jibberish in Windows Explorer and when reinserted in the camera, it said the card was blank. I fortunately had a copy of "Card Recovery" (http://www.cardrecovery.com/) that I had bought during a previous similar incident and in both cases it fully recovered all files from the cards. If I remember correctly, Card Recovery's website even let you scan the disc to see what it could recover and it would show you thumbnails of all the files before you decoded if you wanted to pay for the software (it was something like $40 - which was well worth recovering all the photos the first time and I continue to have the software for future needs).

As far as a damaged memory stick, I'm sure the data is still there - is there any way to disect the thing and put the guts in the shell of another memory stick? Don't give up on it - your data is still on that memory stick and it is salvageable one way or another.