For my file backups, I use the CrashPlan service and software. In addition to backing up to their servers, it also takes care of my local backup as well. It's a great service and I highly recommend it. Their software is pretty good too. For the most part, just tell it what to back up, where to back it up to and you're done.
I know for a fact that the service works - I had the misfortune of accidentally erasing a file and had to get it from the CrashPlan remote backup. That was also dead easy. Go CrashPlan!
One of the services that they offer is a weekly "backup report" that summarizes backup activity for the account. My report has four entries - remote backup for the main computer, the remote backups for my daughter's laptops, and the local backup for the main computer.
Imagine my surprise when the report showed that there were files that were getting backed up in the local backup, but not the remote backup. So I went and investigated and it turned out that the software was having trouble connecting to the remote site. CrashPlan tech support was fairly prompt in responding to my emails and a few days later we determined that the software had just gotten itself confused and a simple system reboot cured everything.
The lesson to learn here is not that CrashPlan is imperfect - nothing is perfect and nothing ever will be. Rather the lesson is: Do not take your backups for granted. Make sure that the backups are running the way that they are supposed to be. Periodically check to be sure that you can recover your files.
Stuff happens. It isn't always big horrible disasters either, sometimes a simple computer glitch is enough to destroy your data.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
God bless the people of Japan
We're always sure that nothing like that could ever happen to us. And yet, these disasters happen to someone. We're not special in that regard, and our time will come sooner or later.
So count your blessings and help out in whatever way you can. The people that you help rebuild today are going to be the ones that help you rebuild tomorrow.
And for heaven's sake - back up your files before it's too late.
So count your blessings and help out in whatever way you can. The people that you help rebuild today are going to be the ones that help you rebuild tomorrow.
And for heaven's sake - back up your files before it's too late.
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Facts of Life (part 1)
If you jump off of a tall building, you will fall, hit the ground, and probably die. That's a fact of life. If you ignore this fact, it isn't any less true. Plans that do not take this fact into account will be doomed to failure. Ignorance of this fact will not save you.
I read a story once that presented ten "Facts of Life" and I found the facts themselves, the discussion of them by the characters and the manner in which characters applied the facts to their own lives to be quite fascinating.
Now whole books could probably be written about the philosophical and practical aspects of TFOL, but that isn't what this blog is about. So how do these facts apply to preservation of family history? Let's take a look.
The first fact, "Life Is Not Fair" refers to how stuff happens. The same stuff doesn't happen to everyone, but stuff does happen. We can wail and gnash our teeth, scream in impotent rage, or we can accept that stuff happens and get on with our lives.
Sometimes we can prepare in advance - like smoke detectors - so that the severity of the stuff is reduced, and sometimes the only advanced preparations that we can make are so that life can resume after the stuff is over.
On the Gulf Coast, the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina erased whole towns, washing away pretty much everything. Most people survived because they heeded the calls to evacuate, but all they had left was whatever meager belongings they had managed to take with them.
If a fire were to break out in your home, you probably wouldn't have any time to save anything and might be left with only the clothes on your back.
So there it is - Life Is Not Fair, and some of that unfairness could come along and completely mess up your life. Are you prepared?
Preserving your family history (photos, videos, etc) might not be all that high on your list of priorities now, but take a moment to imagine how you would feel if your house were to be destroyed and you had done nothing to save any of it. There's no need to protect it all right away - prioritize - preserve the important stuff first.
You'll want to have off-site backups, in the event that the whole house is destroyed. You'll also want to have on-site backups too. After all, stuff happens to computers, hard disks, CDs, DVDs and thumb drives.
I read a story once that presented ten "Facts of Life" and I found the facts themselves, the discussion of them by the characters and the manner in which characters applied the facts to their own lives to be quite fascinating.
Now whole books could probably be written about the philosophical and practical aspects of TFOL, but that isn't what this blog is about. So how do these facts apply to preservation of family history? Let's take a look.
The first fact, "Life Is Not Fair" refers to how stuff happens. The same stuff doesn't happen to everyone, but stuff does happen. We can wail and gnash our teeth, scream in impotent rage, or we can accept that stuff happens and get on with our lives.
Sometimes we can prepare in advance - like smoke detectors - so that the severity of the stuff is reduced, and sometimes the only advanced preparations that we can make are so that life can resume after the stuff is over.
On the Gulf Coast, the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina erased whole towns, washing away pretty much everything. Most people survived because they heeded the calls to evacuate, but all they had left was whatever meager belongings they had managed to take with them.
If a fire were to break out in your home, you probably wouldn't have any time to save anything and might be left with only the clothes on your back.
So there it is - Life Is Not Fair, and some of that unfairness could come along and completely mess up your life. Are you prepared?
Preserving your family history (photos, videos, etc) might not be all that high on your list of priorities now, but take a moment to imagine how you would feel if your house were to be destroyed and you had done nothing to save any of it. There's no need to protect it all right away - prioritize - preserve the important stuff first.
You'll want to have off-site backups, in the event that the whole house is destroyed. You'll also want to have on-site backups too. After all, stuff happens to computers, hard disks, CDs, DVDs and thumb drives.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Growing old ... not so gracefully
As part of the historical trust project for my own family, I've been working on converting all of our camcorder footage from tape to digital. Once loaded up on the computer, it gets backed up (one local backup plus remote backup) and can be easily shared with anyone who wants a copy.
The video comes in two varieties. From 1990 to 2000 we had a gigantic and somewhat ungainly VHS camcorder. From 2003 to the present, we had a digital 8 camcorder. We don't record 8mm movies any more - last Christmas we got a Canon digital SLR that records beautiful 720p.
The first phase was to convert all of the VHS tape. Since it was older, it got higher precedence. 7 tapes, approximately 14 hours of video became 310 individual video clips. We haven't finished the inventory yet but we've been working on it.
During the second phase, I converted all of the digital 8 footage. 12 tapes yielded about 10 hours of video for 78 individual clips (nearly 3 hours of it from the Summer Academy productions of "Godspell", "Once on This Island" and "Send Me On My Way").
So what I found out during this process surprised me. VHS tape, as it ages, the video gets snowy, the color becomes weak and the audio becomes noisy. Digital 8 tapes, as they age, you get drop outs - short sections where parts of frames or whole frames are lost. During a dropout, the audio goes to white noise.
So what does this mean exactly? Well, mostly it means that, if you have any video tapes containing important family memories that you should get started on converting them, before age causes them to degrade any further. However, it also means that, if you have both analog and digital footage then you should convert the digital stuff first - it just doesn't hold up as well.
The video comes in two varieties. From 1990 to 2000 we had a gigantic and somewhat ungainly VHS camcorder. From 2003 to the present, we had a digital 8 camcorder. We don't record 8mm movies any more - last Christmas we got a Canon digital SLR that records beautiful 720p.
The first phase was to convert all of the VHS tape. Since it was older, it got higher precedence. 7 tapes, approximately 14 hours of video became 310 individual video clips. We haven't finished the inventory yet but we've been working on it.
During the second phase, I converted all of the digital 8 footage. 12 tapes yielded about 10 hours of video for 78 individual clips (nearly 3 hours of it from the Summer Academy productions of "Godspell", "Once on This Island" and "Send Me On My Way").
So what I found out during this process surprised me. VHS tape, as it ages, the video gets snowy, the color becomes weak and the audio becomes noisy. Digital 8 tapes, as they age, you get drop outs - short sections where parts of frames or whole frames are lost. During a dropout, the audio goes to white noise.
So what does this mean exactly? Well, mostly it means that, if you have any video tapes containing important family memories that you should get started on converting them, before age causes them to degrade any further. However, it also means that, if you have both analog and digital footage then you should convert the digital stuff first - it just doesn't hold up as well.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
About that title...
So what exactly do I mean by "Family Historical Trust"?
To me, a historical trust is when there is a place, artifact, picture, document, etc. of such historical significance that it warrants a higher than usual level of protection so that it can be appreciated by current and future generations. Just as parents have some responsibility to not unduly squander their children's inheritance, so do current generations have a responsibility not to waste the cultural inheritance of future generations.
The US federal government has the National Archives, the Smithsonian and the National Parks service all working to preserve various historic places, documents, etc. State and local governments have similar (though much smaller) organizations. What about at the family level, though?
Try looking in a mirror.
Most families don't have the resources for a museum and staff, so, of necessity, the work will have to be done entirely by volunteers. If you pick up the slack then the family pictures and videos you save will be available for future generations of your family. If you don't then, in the next disaster, they will all be lost.
To me, a historical trust is when there is a place, artifact, picture, document, etc. of such historical significance that it warrants a higher than usual level of protection so that it can be appreciated by current and future generations. Just as parents have some responsibility to not unduly squander their children's inheritance, so do current generations have a responsibility not to waste the cultural inheritance of future generations.
The US federal government has the National Archives, the Smithsonian and the National Parks service all working to preserve various historic places, documents, etc. State and local governments have similar (though much smaller) organizations. What about at the family level, though?
Try looking in a mirror.
Most families don't have the resources for a museum and staff, so, of necessity, the work will have to be done entirely by volunteers. If you pick up the slack then the family pictures and videos you save will be available for future generations of your family. If you don't then, in the next disaster, they will all be lost.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Happy New Year
Many people, thinking about the new year, look at changes that they want to make in their life. Whether it's to lose weight, get involved or spend more time with family, there are many different ways we can improve our lives. Myself, I would like to get to the gym more.
One are where many people could do better is with computer backups. At work, many of us take it for granted that the folks in IT are backing up our computers. At home, however, we are the IT department - and all too many of us are not doing our jobs - not even me (need to convert the digital-8 tapes and get them into the backup process; need to go through the print photos, pull out the important ones and scan them; need to finish labeling the VHS footage).
So here is an opportunity to make a change this year that will give you peace of mind - set up some kind of backup system (including at least one off-site component). I can heartily recommend CrashPlan, which allows backups to local disks, to friends who also have the CrashPlan software and to the CrashPlan data center. It's a reasonably good deal, easy to set up, comes with varying levels of encryption (to protect the privacy of your files) and I can vouch that it works (saved a file that I had accidentally deleted).
There are other companies that offer similar services, so if you like to check out your options before buying, please do check out services like Mozy and BackBlaze, but for goodness sake do something. Every year thousands of homes are destroyed. Don't kid yourself, yours could be next. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
One are where many people could do better is with computer backups. At work, many of us take it for granted that the folks in IT are backing up our computers. At home, however, we are the IT department - and all too many of us are not doing our jobs - not even me (need to convert the digital-8 tapes and get them into the backup process; need to go through the print photos, pull out the important ones and scan them; need to finish labeling the VHS footage).
So here is an opportunity to make a change this year that will give you peace of mind - set up some kind of backup system (including at least one off-site component). I can heartily recommend CrashPlan, which allows backups to local disks, to friends who also have the CrashPlan software and to the CrashPlan data center. It's a reasonably good deal, easy to set up, comes with varying levels of encryption (to protect the privacy of your files) and I can vouch that it works (saved a file that I had accidentally deleted).
There are other companies that offer similar services, so if you like to check out your options before buying, please do check out services like Mozy and BackBlaze, but for goodness sake do something. Every year thousands of homes are destroyed. Don't kid yourself, yours could be next. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Some Things Can't Be Put Off
I was talking to a friend recently about scanning family photos. My position is that family photos are a physical manifestation of times and events that we want to remember. By scanning pictures into our computers and backing up our computer files, we can preserve those memories indefinitely, share them with friends and family and protect them against loss.
Now my friend is a smart guy, very reasonable and responsible. So imagine my surprise when he told me that he thinks that scanning the pictures would be a good idea but that there are just so many that it would be an impossible job. When I heard his reply, I didn't have an immediate answer for it - I've tackled big jobs before and, at first, they do seem like they will never end.
Then there is this quote:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
-- Edmund Burk
To me, there are two important ways in which this statement relates to the problem of scanning a large collection of family photos:
Now my friend is a smart guy, very reasonable and responsible. So imagine my surprise when he told me that he thinks that scanning the pictures would be a good idea but that there are just so many that it would be an impossible job. When I heard his reply, I didn't have an immediate answer for it - I've tackled big jobs before and, at first, they do seem like they will never end.
Then there is this quote:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
-- Edmund Burk
To me, there are two important ways in which this statement relates to the problem of scanning a large collection of family photos:
- As with any long journey that is worthwhile, you have to take it one step at a time. If thinking about the thousands of steps makes you afraid to take the first one then you are well and truly stuck.
- If you can only do a little, then prioritize. Surely you can find ten pictures whose loss would feel tragic. Scan those today and tomorrow see if you can find ten more. When you've scanned all of the pictures whose loss would be tragic, you can start on those whose loss would merely be extremely sad. In the end, you might find that a significant number of pictures aren't important enough to warrant scanning at all.
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