Significant Alterations, not by me, to routes

One route had textures and splines changed and the other had track changed. I am probably at fault but have no idea how. So, just a note on the slim chance it was the TS19 product. This has happened before but it seems that it is certainly not wide-spread. Backup to CDP is always the best idea and try to do it after every major change.

May have been builtin assets updated for TRS19?

No way to tell now. I loaded a 1 week old backup. I have to get into TS18 more often to catch this stuff. I was diligently saving which has no real value in some cases. Now stopping and backing up to SSD. At night it goes to Carbonite. I miss being able to pop in a diskette and feel confident that I always had the latest off line.

Dick

I miss being able to pop in a diskette ​

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Get yourself a USB connected portable DVD writer. They are not expensive. Mine is an LG. Has the added advantage of being able to transfer data to your second computer (if you have one)

Peter

narrowgauge said:

Dick



Get yourself a USB connected portable DVD writer. They are not expensive. Mine is an LG. Has the added advantage of being able to transfer data to your second computer (if you have one)

Peter

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Yes, good option. If you really want to go old school, get a USB Floppy drive - sad to say I actually have one. I don't know if you can buy floppies any more.

I have a few but I want my grand-children to see how they used to fit into a slot just like the new SD memory cards.

I actually accessed some data on an old 3-1/2 inch floppy disk the other day. The disk is about 25 years old, but the drive is a newer, about 6 years old, USB drive. I could still mount and read the disk on my Windows 10 machine.

If you can get new floppies, they can't be trusted. I went through mine from almost 20 years back and about 50% of them were faulty. early DVD's seem to be error free. If you think about it, all our current data storage is based on magnetism, I think DVD's rely on a change of state, I think this makes them more reliable.

I recently lost all Windows programs and data on two computers, I had a backup of my main computer on the second computer which was destroyed at the same time. As far as I could tell, it was an electrical fault which zapped them both. Lesson to be learned, make sure that the backup is not kept in the computer or on any connected computer.

Peter

narrowgauge said:

If you can get new floppies, they can't be trusted. I went through mine from almost 20 years back and about 50% of them were faulty. early DVD's seem to be error free. If you think about it, all our current data storage is based on magnetism, I think DVD's rely on a change of state, I think this makes them more reliable.

I recently lost all Windows programs and data on two computers, I had a backup of my main computer on the second computer which was destroyed at the same time. As far as I could tell, it was an electrical fault which zapped them both. Lesson to be learned, make sure that the backup is not kept in the computer or on any connected computer.

Peter

Click to expand...

I had the same problem with my backup drive when that got zapped. Lazy me did not turn it off and I had a surge that went beyond the UPS I had my machine plugged into. ZOT! and everything went on to never-never land including my backups. Lesson learned. Turn off backup drive went not in use.

The UPS did its job for the most part, but when lightning strikes it can blow through the MOSFETs and we never know because they do their job only once. After that one time, they are essentially a wire link and that's exactly that. They no longer had the surge protection they were supposed to be providing and the poor APC device, an older one at the time, fried as a result.

You are correct. DVDs and their older CD relations are created through altering a substrate with a laser. This is a spectrum-sensitive coating which will 'write the data' to the disk when exposed to a specific frequency of laser light, but read at another. The problem is the discs are also sunlight sensitive and heat sensitive. If the burned CDRs/DVDRs are not stored properly, they too can degrade and all you'll have is a bunch of coasters.

Commercial DVDs and CDs are not 'burned' but instead are actually injection molded using polycarbonate plastic just like that used for eyeglasses. A master disk is used to cut the injection mold and a special machine is used for the injection process. For small runs this isn't an economical method due to the cost of the equipment and setup, but for those 100,000 - plus runs it's better to have the discs mastered and molded. These discs are less prone to damage, but are not impervious. A bit of Acetone can completely destroy a DVD because the stuff will etch the plastic.

I haven't come across any new floppies recently most of mine are at least 20-plus years old if not more. I still have some Zip drive disks too and a couple of working Zip drives. I never experienced that "click of death" syndrome with my drive or disks. I am probably more careful with my equipment than many people I supported.

Speaking of floppy drives. I used to repair the old 8-inch Shugart drives with the little rubber belt inside. The belts would eventually stretch causing disks to be unreadable. We had special alignment disks, software, and all was plugged into an oscilloscope. A special pattern was sent to the scope and we used to align the dots to the center. When all dots became a single dot the drive was aligned. All was good going forward usually, but any floppies written during the failing period were usually unreadable.