Maybe by yelling I might find a small glimps of hope that I might take my own advice SOMEDAY!!!!
( this is the part where I bang my head on the wall)
STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID......................
I've wasted the whole day trying to retrieve data off my laptop. And if I only back it up once in a while I'd be happy as a clam
Hard drives go people!!!!!! It's not like your closet, you can't just fill it with stuff and it'll be there forever.
The hard drive monster is coming to your town next.
ARE YOU READY? I WASN"T
[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Bob Rochon ]
I've never done this (blushing) and I know it's important, probably not as important as I will think of it should I loose everything!
I'm going out to buy some blank CDs today...I'm making it one of my priorities tonight.
A
My wife just got a new 'puter, and we've networked it with my shop unit. The older one has no CD burner or zip drive--- the new one has a CD burner built in. I'd like to back up my Signlab (.CDL) files, but nothing else. How does one computer-illiterate go about this?
Thanx in advance.
Man I wish I never bought a digital camera.
If by cance, you do get a virus, you can format and reinstall from your disks, and nothing will be lost, except lots of time! 
Werked fer me!
And computers do melt down... as mine did three weeks ago.
In all I lost one letter. And I had a hard copy of that.
With CD burners being so cheap and the disks likewise there is no excuse.
Do it folks. Stuff happens. Especially to me.
-dan
Nothing on the Drives, but ME, Myself, and I....
I learnt this the hard (Disk Drive Way)
LOL
[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: Stephen Deveau ]
In backing up through a network you might find it a little slow for data trnsfer to keep up with the CD Burner. I have had that problem before, I use 10/100 ethernet cards. They have faster ones.
I usually copy my jobs folder completely by right clicking on it and selecting copy. Then I minimize that window. go to the network neighborhood icon on your desktop anddouble click it, you should see the 2 computers on your network listed. Double click on the computer that has the CD burner find the c drive, then the windows folder, then the desktop. Click the right mouse button and select paste. That will take some time but you'll be copying all your CDL files onto the desktop of the second PC. When you go to burn hte files onto a CD you should not encounter any buffer underruns because it will be reading of the hard drive of the same PC.
You don't have to paste it to the desktop, you can use any folder as long as you remember where you put them. I use the desktop that way I don't forget to delete them after.
I do this only once in a while because it is a little time consuming. maybe someone else will have a better idea.
Have fun
Can someone here do a step by step on that for us?
I have a CD burner, but others may have to use a zip drive or floppys.
A little tutorial would be apprieciated, I'm sure!
A
I've been lazy lately in not backing up every day since being homebased, but rather about 2x a week. Thanks for the heads up. Done today once again.
Just a friendly reminder that doing the backups is only half of the equation. If they are needed, the other half comes into play; RESTORATION. If they are needed, this is not the time to find out there is a problem in that arena.
Each method requires a lot of the basic steps.
If you use a tape backup like Donna, then you select which folders or files you want to back up and you can leave the tape in and at a predefined time it will back up the system, also with many tape backups you can back up the whole system as well.
I have not had much luck restoring from my tape back ups over the years, like Bob G. I too have had restore failures. Tape is also very sensitive and can be damaged easily. Also tapes work on compression so if you were to copy say your Quickbooks file which is compressed already, it would compress it more and possibly damage it.
Floppies can only hold 1.44 meg so if want you want to back up is more than that, you can span multiple floppies but a program like Microsoft backup which is part of windows must be used so as to use all the space on the disks and it will split files onto another floppy seamlessly. As with tapes they too can be damaged easily.
CD Burners in my opinion offer the best security and or flexibility. I use cdrw for the most part, that way I can write and rewrite file onto it. The software works the same as tape and floppy, but a CD is supposed to last 10-15 years and can transfered to another computer if the main one dies. It can only handle around 650 meg but it is fast.
It doesn't matter which method you use, the important thing to know is where your important files reside and in what folder. I don't waste my time backing up programs but rather just the data I created.
In Omega the jobs I create are .plt files and reside in my jobs folder. But using the edge, a lot of .plt files have a reference bitmap or .jpg or .tiff file for printing if I don't back those up as well then the .plt file is useless.
Tape drives if they are big enough are by far the easiest to use and are for the most part unattended and thoughtless back up.
What ever you use, just do it. I need to hear this over and over agin. And if you use digital cameras don't leave those pictures just laying in your hard drive, it takes 2 minutes with most cd burners to archive them. I spent about 4 hours retrieveing what I could of my photos yesterday and archived them onto a cd in about 2 minutes.
Go figure
[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: Bob Rochon ]
backing up your files in a second format that is generic is not a bad idea either.
I recently had my dongle key puke out on me and found myself dead in the water for a day because I could not even ACCESS my Inspire files in any other of my programs.
Right now I'm in the process of making EPS copies of all my files(even using the utility they provide, its very time consuming doing this to 9 years worth of files)
The good news part of this is that they overnighted me, not one but TWO dongle keys because that particular key was running both Inspire and Flexi.
Or am I confused here?
How many CD discs is average?
Or am I only making copies of my images files, etc?
Thanks, sorry for being so dense!
A
Take a good look through your files and delete all thoses that are duplicates of the final product.
Before you burn to CD remember to use CD-RW disc only as you can add more info to them later.
Once burnt to the disk, that is it you cannot delete the file title.
But you can add a upgrade title name of the project.
Label all CD's with a Sharpie so you don't misplace or loose it.
IE (Project files (DEC-JAN) (JAN-MAR) (MAR-APR)2002
For $2.00 bucks a pop for the CD's it is well worth the trouble of redrawing your image again.
Depending on the file size you can store up to 2000 files in around 75-100ks per.
The larger the format file the less you will be able to fit.
Your CD burn software will tell you when you are very close to the limit of that disk anyway.
POP the next one in and continue on....
Sorry, but density is found in Fly Creek, too.
Thanx in advance.
I just picked up a spindle of 50 Memorex Cds for $18.99....has a rebate of 10 bucks ..that makes it 50 for 9 bucks....that comes out to 18 cents each.
A
Hoping one day soon tho for a cd burner so we can replace all our floppys (approx 150 over the last 12 years) with one or two disks. (Technology is definately getting out of hand).
My CD burner doesn't rewrite, but I think it let's me add stuff to it...
No biggie...I don't have the volume of biz most of you have, but if it's a matter of just copying my design files to a disk every so often, that's easy enuf!
I thought you ment to copy everything on my computer, programmes and all....DOI!
densly yours,
A
