The Importance of Back Ups!

[clam1952]

Slower file transfer in Win7 than XP?
In win7 you can speed up file transfer by disabling Remote Differential Compression
Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows features on or off, untick Remote Differential Compression.

Also turn off TCP/IP auto tuning
Open a command Window as Administrator, won't work if you don't.
type less the quotes "netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled" then press enter
Change disabled to normal to enable it again
Reboot PC.

 

[HiBaller]

Check out the Microsoft site for a little utility called SyncToy. It is free and works wonderfully well in backing up just about anything you want to back up to multiple drives - external and internal.

I also use it to synchronize my laptop and desktops when I'm back from a trip and do some writing. Just a click makes all the directories "equal".

Bill

 

[jrfolco]

I wouldn't rely on windows restore to count on it backing up everything. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. And if your drive goes south, so will windows restore.

Bob, You misunderstood my post. I'm not using Windows Restore as a backup, I'm using Genie Timeline, a backup software, which can be purchased from the website shown in my above post. I was comparing it to Windows System Restore.

Joe

 

[martinvk]

External backup drives are good but if the power goes off while working or creating the backups, things can still go blah. A good UPS is also highly recommended. Several times I've seen the lights flicker and the hear the UPS take the load but the computer keeps going without skipping a beat and nothing is corrupted. Of course you actually have to make the backups for them to be able to save your bacon and not just once when you first buy the disk but on a regular basis.

 

[bl4882]

It's not only having the hard drive, but having a program , like the one that I posted a link to in my previous post, that automatically does a backup is what is important. You can have 5 backup drives, but if you don't have some kind of automated system to back up your data, sooner or later, you will lose some of your data, and much of it may not be replaceable.

Bob, you make a good point. Whatever preserves your hard labor is worth it.

Bernie

 

[JCitron]

External backup drives are good but if the power goes off while working or creating the backups, things can still go blah. A good UPS is also highly recommended. Several times I've seen the lights flicker and the hear the UPS take the load but the computer keeps going without skipping a beat and nothing is corrupted. Of course you actually have to make the backups for them to be able to save your bacon and not just once when you first buy the disk but on a regular basis.

I agree. A good UPS and a good data backup go hand in hand for data integrity. In the big corporate world, it is unheard of for computer rooms not to have both. In those that operated without them, they put themselves at risk and sure enough lost plenty of data. All I can say then is I told you so.

John

 

[Robert2d6]

I agree. A good UPS and a good data backup go hand in hand for data integrity. In the big corporate world, it is unheard of for computer rooms not to have both. In those that operated without them, they put themselves at risk and sure enough lost plenty of data. All I can say then is I told you so.

John

Actually, if you have data you can't afford to lose under any circumstances, the rule is three copies of the data, and one should be off site like in the cloud. I have external drive backups, and for financial stuff that I cannot replace, I also use Google Drive, to store a copy. Even if my house burns down, I still have a backup left.

 

[JCitron]

Actually, if you have data you can't afford to lose under any circumstances, the rule is three copies of the data, and one should be off site like in the cloud. I have external drive backups, and for financial stuff that I cannot replace, I also use Google Drive, to store a copy. Even if my house burns down, I still have a backup left.

That is an excellent plan. Having off-site storage is important because as you said, anything can happen.

The example I gave actually happened at a place where I worked. My manager didn't want to spend the money on a replacement battery for a server UPS or a new DLT drive. There was a power glitch and we lost two drives on the RAID. I was able to recover some of the data, but the more recent stuff was either corrupted or sent off to bit heaven. The amount of money he would have spent would have been about $2400 max. That was for a replacement DLT 8000 and about $300 for the new battery for the APS 2200r. This was a case of being penny-wise and pound foolish as they say.

When the big crash happened, I went into his office and told him exactly what I said before and walked out of the office. He was terminated a few months later

John

 

[obirek]

I do back up my routes frequently in at least two places - a memory stick and an external drive. Not once a week, because to lose a week work would be heart-breaking, but each time I make a smallest change to a route or a session. Even if I add a single tree or alter a command in a driver schedule I make a backup. But even such a strict and tedious procedure won't keep me out of troubles. Below I listed some of the reasons, why. This limitations were observed in TRS2006 and TC. I also believe they affect later versions of Trainz, but I am not 100% sure and I would much appreciate your comments on this.

1/ It is easy to make a backup, but not so easy to revert to an older version. To do this you would need to rename all your routes and sessions to reflect the changes, but this can be very messy and error prone. What we need is a proper, built-in versioning system, so one can easy switch between different versions of the same route. Such feature would also allow maintaining multiple versions of the same asset, for different versions of Trainz, for instance. Something like CVS or Git used by software developers, but not as extensive and easy to use by non-programmers

2/ Currently, it is not possible to back up nested dependencies. If I backup a route that has a brick factory and this factory depends on other assets, like bricks on pallet or brick clay, then the latter are not backed up automatically. I need to go through all the composite assets and back them up separately. Again, messy and error prone. If a dependency is from a third party, no longer available in the original location or on the download station, then this asset is gone for good and my route is incomplete. This way I lost number of New South Wales locos (and other precious assets for this region) after my PC crashed.

3/ When you restore a route from a back up and the back up contains one or more dependencies, these dependencies are automatically open for edit in your Content Manager. If by a chance an open dependency has a newer version on the download station, it will be automatically updated. There is no guarantee that this new version will work in your Surveyor or Driver. Such behaviour is a time-bomb to destroy the route you attempting to restore to its original form as well as ruin all other routes using the corrupted version. This include built-in routes and assets. This way many of my routes got useless and I had to re-install the entire simulator. The only way to avoid this potential disaster is not to commit the dependencies, by deleting them from the list, but this can be easily forgotten and there is no mechanism to warn you about the dare consequences.

4/ Sometimes I touch many routes and sessions in a short time. It would be nice to have an option to enable automatic backup of all changes, each time I exit the program. Instead I have to do it manually and rely on my not so perfect memory.

So, while I agree that the existing back up system is better than none, I believe there is much room for an improvement.

 

[boomer_aus_00]

LOL the best way to backup your content is 1: on another drive 2: USB drive 3: ON RW-DVD OR RW-CD as a hard copy that you can put away until you update it or need to use it again. i lost all my backup's for TRS had it on a backup network HDD now 5 months & i'm still rebuilding my database back up

 

[obirek]

LOL the best way to backup your content is 1: on another drive 2: USB drive 3: ON RW-DVD OR RW-CD as a hard copy that you can put away until you update it or need to use it again. i lost all my backup's for TRS had it on a backup network HDD now 5 months & i'm still rebuilding my database back up

Yes, but how often one makes a hard back up on a CD? Too many times I discovered that back up on a CD is so outdated, I need to spend days, if not weeks to restore the latest version (if I still remember how). Automatic back up is also limited, because it requires your PC running all the time, plus it copies everything indiscriminately. Still, each time you exit Trainz you have to remember to back up all the content you have touched or it will not be in your backup folder.

In my opinion, the best option is to buy another three hard drives and configure them as RAID in the level that best suits your needs. Expensive, but reliable. It still will not restore the content you removed inadvertently or got broken for some reason.

So, there is no perfect solution.

 

[JCitron]

TS12 does backups of content that is modified. You can specify the number of backups you want to save, and these are saved under a particular day/folder. In addition to the modified content, there is also an option for auto-backups when using Surveyor. This can be handy and has saved my backside a few times.

I agree though, a built-in versioning system would be helpful. In some ways there is. If you do a save-as, and create a new version of the same route, the kuid number changes. It would be nice though, if there was a + button next to the route-name in the save dialog box. This is what 3ds 4.0 for DOS had and I believe Max has. If you want to do a version update, click on the + and version name/number is changed by incrementing the file name by a version number.

As I've said before, having backups in multiple places is your best bet against disaster. So having a copy not just on a local hard drive, but also on an external device, and perhaps sending a copy offsite is the safest. The problem is the shear large amount of data that Trainz contains. This is not like a handful of small documents, but over the years, users, including myself, have mustered up quite a library of bits and pieces from various sources. I've had Trainz since 2004, and now have 450GB of data. This is a lot of content to lose should a hard drive crash. Copying this stuff off to the cloud somewhere is not an option either due to the amount of time it would take not just to offload the information, but also to restore it shold there be a crash.

Of all the things we'd like changed in Trainz, I would like to be able to optionally have my user data folder on another drive outside of the actual Trainz folder. This would make backing and restorming the information easier, and would allow for growth without impacting the drive where Trainz is installed. This would be especially helpful now that people have small but speedy SSDs that don't quite have the capacity for the amount of data we have, and don't quite have the reliability either of the more traditional hard drives.

John

 

[martinvk]

Perhaps we should step back a bit and look at what we have here. It's a hobby, something to do because it is fun in some way. An ordinary backup once in a while along with a UPS to prevent file damage because of power glitches should be enough for the vast majority of people.

Sure it's a pain to suffer data loss but unless you're in production and earning a living from Trainz, it's not a major, life altering disaster. Yes some work may be hard to restore and might have to be recreated but let's not give it more importance than it deserves. Unless you have a dedicated Trainz PC, there is probably other more important data that you want to preserve on the harddrive.

If you have a home network, add an NAS box with dual drives in RAID 1 configuration. IF one drive fails, replace it and the box automatically synchronizes the drives. Copy all your Trainz folders once and then once in a while just copy the files that changed since the last time, that shouldn't take too long. Store your downloaded CDP files there and you can always restore them to Trainz without having to download them again.

 

[Robert2d6]

Perhaps we should step back a bit and look at what we have here. It's a hobby, something to do because it is fun in some way. An ordinary backup once in a while along with a UPS to prevent file damage because of power glitches should be enough for the vast majority of people.

Sure it's a pain to suffer data loss but unless you're in production and earning a living from Trainz, it's not a major, life altering disaster. Yes some work may be hard to restore and might have to be recreated but let's not give it more importance than it deserves. Unless you have a dedicated Trainz PC, there is probably other more important data that you want to preserve on the harddrive.

If you have a home network, add an NAS box with dual drives in RAID 1 configuration. IF one drive fails, replace it and the box automatically synchronizes the drives. Copy all your Trainz folders once and then once in a while just copy the files that changed since the last time, that shouldn't take too long. Store your downloaded CDP files there and you can always restore them to Trainz without having to download them again.

I disagree with you. Most people have files on their PC's that they do not want to loose under any circumstances, financial records, irreplaceable photos, important documents, etc.... Hard drives, both brand new and old, fail all the time, for many reasons besides a power glitch. XP is vulnerable for instance, when a program crashes and locks up your PC, and you are forced to use the power switch to reboot it. That can cause a corrupt system file, which involves wiping the HD and re installing windows to get going again. No backup, and you are screwed. Actually the only really foolproof raid system, which many companies use where data is critical, is a Raid 5 system. In Raid 5, you can totally lose a drive, and you lose zero data.

 

[RRSignal]

Perhaps we should step back a bit and look at what we have here. It's a hobby, something to do because it is fun in some way. An ordinary backup once in a while along with a UPS to prevent file damage because of power glitches should be enough for the vast majority of people.

Sure it's a pain to suffer data loss but unless you're in production and earning a living from Trainz, it's not a major, life altering disaster. Yes some work may be hard to restore and might have to be recreated but let's not give it more importance than it deserves. Unless you have a dedicated Trainz PC, there is probably other more important data that you want to preserve on the harddrive.

If you have a home network, add an NAS box with dual drives in RAID 1 configuration. IF one drive fails, replace it and the box automatically synchronizes the drives. Copy all your Trainz folders once and then once in a while just copy the files that changed since the last time, that shouldn't take too long. Store your downloaded CDP files there and you can always restore them to Trainz without having to download them again.

Generally agreed. I use a NAS box as a media server (Dlink DNS-321.) I had a home server before that. I had usually used RAID-1 setups on my desktops previously, but have found my media server to be just as good a solution since it's always on and modern NAS' don't use much power. In effect, I have 3 copies of my critical data and, with storing stuff on Hotfile, I have one off-site backup. I back up photos and such to DVD as well, but, with DVD, you have to be sure to use quality media and a decent burner.

 

[JCitron]

I disagree with you. Most people have files on their PC's that they do not want to loose under any circumstances, financial records, irreplaceable photos, important documents, etc.... Hard drives, both brand new and old, fail all the time, for many reasons besides a power glitch. XP is vulnerable for instance, when a program crashes and locks up your PC, and you are forced to use the power switch to reboot it. That can cause a corrupt system file, which involves wiping the HD and re installing windows to get going again. No backup, and you are screwed. Actually the only really foolproof raid system, which many companies use where data is critical, is a Raid 5 system. In Raid 5, you can totally lose a drive, and you lose zero data.

I agree, Bob.

Trainz may be a hobby, but it lives on our computers along with our important information as well. When I lost my boot drive about 4 years ago, I also lost my storm chasing videos, school piano performances, and tons of other data. I was lucky that I didn't also lose my Trainz stuff, but that's because I had just moved that to another hard drive to make space for my videos and music programs. Mixed with my videos and music performances, were other important documents including original writings for a book I am working on, my just updated resume, and tons of other stuff I've never recovered. Why wasn't this backed up? I was being dumb that's why. When I finally got around to backing up my data, it was too late. I did not follow my own strict guidelines that I followed for over a decade before. Backup, backup, and backup to whatever media is practical for the purpose.

With my more recent drive failure, about two weeks ago now, I lost nothing that didn't have somewhere else. None of my data is stored on my boot drive, and my data drive had been backed up a few days before. I do my backups now on a regular basis so I don't get hit again. You learn the hard way, I suppose, and this was one of them.

John

 

[boomer_aus_00]

Perhaps we should step back a bit and look at what we have here. It's a hobby, something to do because it is fun in some way. An ordinary backup once in a while along with a UPS to prevent file damage because of power glitches should be enough for the vast majority of people.

Sure it's a pain to suffer data loss but unless you're in production and earning a living from Trainz, it's not a major, life altering disaster. Yes some work may be hard to restore and might have to be recreated but let's not give it more importance than it deserves. Unless you have a dedicated Trainz PC, there is probably other more important data that you want to preserve on the harddrive.

If you have a home network, add an NAS box with dual drives in RAID 1 configuration. IF one drive fails, replace it and the box automatically synchronizes the drives. Copy all your Trainz folders once and then once in a while just copy the files that changed since the last time, that shouldn't take too long. Store your downloaded CDP files there and you can always restore them to Trainz without having to download them again.

LOL that is what i lost all my back up's on was a NAS diskdrive & RAID stuff that crap i'll never do that 2 a HDD nope i'll keep to my good old FAT32 format it's the better & safest format known by IBM Format all my PC's on my network run FAT 32

 

[martinvk]

FAT32 is just the way data is stored on the disk, nothing to do with how safe it is. If your FAT32 disk fails, the data will be just as lost. A small two disk NAS on your local network means all your data is stored on two separate disks at the same time. For quick, local access to the data, that is pretty safe. If you also make an occasional backup to another location, your data will be even safer. There are other more sophisticated storage solutions including various RAID levels. Each has its pros and cons including setup and maintenance.

My step back comment was specifically for Trainz. How much do you want to pay to keep your other data safe will depend on how much it is worth to you and what you can afford.

 

[boomer_aus_00]

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

 

[WeaselSuit]

A UPS is the way to go.