Back 'em up!

[Rick McCleary]

Since reading Peter's book and attending a couple of his workshops, I have completely changed my way of working with and storing files.  Good DAM practices, primary storage + double back-ups, etc.

I have experienced two hard drive failures in the last week, and, in an incredible reversal of Murphy's Law, suffered no permanent loss because all the data was BACKED UP (twice)!

So, thank you Peter.  And Back 'em Up, everyone!

[peterkrogh]

Rick,
well, nothing like trial by fire.  Glad you survived.  Did you determine the cause of the failure?
Peter

[Rick McCleary]

Peter,

Yes, trial by fire tends to focus your attention like nothing else.

Don't know why the drives failed.  
One (an old 80Gb Maxtor) went out in stumbling, slow-motion collapse.  An old drive, I was transfering files from it to a new one.  The more I tried to navigate through the directory, the more it went senile on me.  I'm rather anal about rebuilding directories on a regular basis (Disk Warrior), so it's somewhat of a mystery to me as to why it became so demented.
The other one (a LaCie external FW) just stopped.  When powered up, its light flickers, but the drive does not spin up.  I contacted LaCie.  Their diagnosis was mechanical failure -- not worth fixing.

So, the truth about hard drives becomes clear:
They are an expendible commodity.  Like gasoline and toilet paper, it's a good idea to keep track of what you have and not run out.

[peterkrogh]

that's pretty funny...