The Importance of Back Ups!

[JCitron]

well been a PC tech for over 15+ years i've seen alot of things & out of all fromats FAT32 it the safest of them all NTFS can go F it self ya have more problems with that then any format for IBM formats & the NAS drive was the reason i lost it all well most as i did have alot on CD or DVD disks but everyone has their own ways thats all i'm saying

Actually NTFS is much better than FAT32 due to the journaling and other redundancies built into the format. FAT32 also has a size limitation imposed on the files and the number of files on the drive.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778410(v=WS.10).aspx

FAT32 is still used today on removable drives including those external 3TB drives, using special formatting methods, and those NAS devices, so keeping this in mind, FAT32 is really not as reliable as you think.

A UPS is the way to go.

This is only part of the equation. A UPS will protect from surges, voltage spikes, and sags, but doesn't protect against device failures. A hard drive mechancal or a new SSD will fail just like any other component in a computer. The mechanical drives will fail more often than a soldistate devices because of the mechanical nature, but SSDs and their relations are still to unstable. I'm not saying that they don't work, it's just the nature of how they are made. and for what market they are aimed at. If the consumer-level components were made to the same standards as enterprise and industrial standards, and in the sizes offered at those levels with the same prices as consumer-grade devices, then they would be a definite plus. The problem is the consumer-grade components do not have the longevity or quality found in the industrial or enterprise quality devices. The problem too is when these devices fail, they die very quickly and in an instant. There is very little chance of data recovery with these deviecs which is unlike a mechanical drive and the magnetic platters.

Having said this, the best thing is to keep in mind that all drives will fail no matter what, and backup the data regularly.

Over the 20-plus years of working in IT, I have seen many changes drive sizes, formats, interfaces, and quality. The hard drives today, to be honest, are made like garbage compared to the drives made even 15 years ago. so there's even more impetus to back up the data.

John

 

[boomer_aus_00]

well the NAS drive i got doesn't even use FAT or NTFS it users some other format anyways my HDD's are not over sized anyways i'm still using 80gb & 160gb & in other pc's 80gb all the way down to 20gb HDD i have no need for 1+tb HDD's i don't see the point in them i don't burn DVD's or Games so i have no need for over sized HDD's

 

[boomer_aus_00]

O yeah & i still run win XP if i had a chioce i'll still be using win95c with true MS-DOS 6.22 but as we all know can't use that with todays tech LOL

 

[JCitron]

O yeah & i still run win XP if i had a chioce i'll still be using win95c with true MS-DOS 6.22 but as we all know can't use that with todays tech LOL

well the NAS drive i got doesn't even use FAT or NTFS it users some other format anyways my HDD's are not over sized anyways i'm still using 80gb & 160gb & in other pc's 80gb all the way down to 20gb HDD i have no need for 1+tb HDD's i don't see the point in them i don't burn DVD's or Games so i have no need for over sized HDD's

In this case, I would agree it's not worth going to NTFS, however, keep in mind the reliabiity of the format. The MFT and the journaling information is much more reliable than the old FAT tables.

I too would still be running DOS and CP/M-plus if it were available. The problem is that thse operating systems didn't have the multi-threading or multitasking capabilities that the newer OS's have, but in some ways they were much faster because they had direct access to the hardware. Today, Windows, Mac OSx, Unix, etc. access the hardware through multiple layers. This keeps the systems more reliable, but makes the computer overall slower because of the different doors and gates the information has to go through just to be processed.

John

 

[boomer_aus_00]

well as i have said for me i've had more problems with NTFS then FAT but as i have said thats me nothing you can say will change my way of looking at NTFS say NTFS has got some up points to old FAT but to me i like FAT i have less problems with it O yeah i still use 32 bit win XP not 64 bit

 

[Robert2d6]

Think I will get out my Betamax , 8 track tape player, and Commodore 64.

 

[boomer_aus_00]

LOL now ya showing ya age there

 

[geophil]

FAT32 is still used today on removable drives including those external 3TB drives, using special formatting methods, and those NAS devices, so keeping this in mind, FAT32 is really not as reliable as you think.

Yes, FAT32 is still in use on USB sticks, memory cards and the like. On a disk, however, I would get rid of it asap. FAT is a very rudimentary technology, I wouldn't even call it a proper file system. You'll find out once your disk encounters problems and how nicely it rebuilds with NTFS. For FAT32 you would already try forensic recovery.

On an NAS, as many of them are Linux anyway, you would run ext3 or ext4, I guess - plus RAID 5, 6 or 1, of course.

BTW, whatever backup policy is in place, it only works if it's fully automatic. Manual backups will never be up to date when needed. Murphy's Law.

 

[shaneturner12]

The only time I would still use FAT32/FAT16/FAT is if I plan to use the hard drive in a Windows 9x/Me system, or in a device that does not support NTFS.

Shane

 

[CWH2011]

In Reply to bl4882 on 22-Jan - I wasn't working on mine for years but the better part of a week. I thought I was covered by saving my work but right now it is "lost" after a crash. Is there somewhere on one of the forums that explains how you were able to reconstruct your work? Any help would be appreciated. Chris.

 

[dricketts]

I have some questions which could probably be posted in this thread. I recently had a HD crash and it had been about three months since I backed up my local folder to an external drive. My route CDP files had been backed up to Dropbox about 30 days before the crash. Though all is not lost I still have data I would like to recover because I was not backing up my local folder daily or even weekly. Using recovery tools a professional told me he was able to recover "all my Trainz data" as the HD was just starting to fail. I haven't been able to view the recovered files because I'm without a PC until I make a decision on a new one.

I have limited experience with these so called recovery tools but I understand the file or folder structure is not retained in the recovery process. Isn't it going to be close to impossible piecing together my local folder given the file structure is gone?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[JCitron]

I have some questions which could probably be posted in this thread. I recently had a HD crash and it had been about three months since I backed up my local folder to an external drive. My route CDP files had been backed up to Dropbox about 30 days before the crash. Though all is not lost I still have data I would like to recover because I was not backing up my local folder daily or even weekly. Using recovery tools a professional told me he was able to recover "all my Trainz data" as the HD was just starting to fail. I haven't been able to view the recovered files because I'm without a PC until I make a decision on a new one.

I have limited experience with these so called recovery tools but I understand the file or folder structure is not retained in the recovery process. Isn't it going to be close to impossible piecing together my local folder given the file structure is gone?

Thanks for any feedback.

It depends...

Some of the recovery tools will rebuild the original directory structure while others just restore the data into oddly named directories. Keep in mind that you may lose some data due to that data being corrupted by the crash and the file pointers being trashed along with it. You'll notice that this will happen sequentially as though the head striped its self across the platters which it does.

I would think your best bet would be to import the data into Content Manager in batches. Perhaps setup folders with 20 to 50 items in it. You can then check the data out in these batches and see how it works before doing more in a similar fashion. This would also make the recovery of good stuff out of the big mash of data that's on the drive just in case there's some corrupted data there as well.

John

 

[dricketts]

It depends...

Some of the recovery tools will rebuild the original directory structure while others just restore the data into oddly named directories.

John

Thanks John. Wouldn't make sense for me to find a professional using a tool that will rebuild the original directory structure? I might have to pm you once I have a look at the recovered data. It's been a while since I explored the local folder but if I remember correctly it was somewhat cryptic to me. Not just a list of cdp or kuid files.

 

[JCitron]

Thanks John. Wouldn't make sense for me to find a professional using a tool that will rebuild the original directory structure? I might have to pm you once I have a look at the recovered data. It's been a while since I explored the local folder but if I remember correctly it was somewhat cryptic to me. Not just a list of cdp or kuid files.

You're welcome.

You might be interested in this here:

Disk Doctors NTFS Data Recovery

http://www.diskdoctors.net/ntfs-data-recovery/software.html

This will give you the directory structure as it was on your drive. You can then select the folders to recover. It's not cheap but it works well. I used this at work to recover some user's data that was inadvertently removed in error.

PM me any time.

John