My drive story

[Tdarcos]

You might be thinking That this is a story about a leasurely drive over open highway and picturesque country roads, back when I could walk.

Unfortunately, this isn't that kind of story.

From my post about Windows 11:

AMA. Legacy BIOS/MBR doesn't support hard drives > 2TB, so everyone with a hard drive that size or larger already made the switch [to UEFI].

Speaking of terabytes of disk space...

I have about 800GB of files on my computer's 1TB drive, acquired or created over several years, because I collect a lot of things. But that's where I had to keep all my stuff. Then I got that 8TB hard drive which CO was nice enough to help pay for. So I started backing up files there. When I got the 4GB drive back from Flack, I used both of them weekly.

Then one day I was told my toom needed to be cleaned, disinfected, and the floor polished. So, my bed is rolled out into the hall, and all the furniture is moved out. The 8TB is on top of my computer, the 4TB on my side desk. When it is back in place and hooked up, the 4GB is fine, but the 8TB is not showng up. Well, obviously, someone dropped it, then put it back without saying anything.

So I do my backups on the 4 only now. Until one day (and you can probably guess what happened next), an aide, who had absolutely no reason to do so, apparently felt that something on that table had to br moved, so she picks up the drive, and drops it! I'm thinking maybe it still be okay long enough to salvage something from it. Well, she picks up the drive and proceeds to drop it, again!!!!! Obviously it's irrrparably danaged' With no hope. I plug it in and...

As I feared, ir's gpne. Well, fortunately, I still have the original files. So I decide to go the cheap route, You can get SD cards off Amazon for under $25, some under $20. So I had two choices: buy one big enough to back up my drive, or one big enough to back up just my Programming directory, and another for everything else, or a complete backup of the drive. I buy a 250GiB and a 512GiB, the former being large enough to backup just my Programming directory, the latter the entire \users\paul directory.

But that doesn't provide a backup for the whole drive. So I bite the bullet and decide to buy another backup drive. This time, I buy a ruggedized one, that can survive 3ft drop without damage. It has 4TB of space, so I can create an image of the drive in case of problems. Plus I can still create file backups.

[Flack]

Sorry to hear this. It has to be incredibly frustrating to have people constantly dropping and breaking your things.

Would it be possible to affix that rugged drive to the top of your computer with some double-sided Velcro? That would allow it to still be removable, but hopefully keep it from getting knocked off.

The only other solution I can think of is cloud storage, if the network there will handle it. I believe Mega still offers 20GB for free, which I realize is not enough for all your stuff, but for $10/month you can get 2TB.

[Tdarcos]

The only other solution I can think of is cloud storage, if the network there will handle it. I believe Mega still offers 20GB for free, which I realize is not enough for all your stuff, but for $10/month you can get 2TB.

Except I can't afford it and think it's expensive. That means 1TB costs $120 every year, and if I'm off-line, I can't get to my files. Plus, after Apple announced the ill-fated plan of scanning every file that was uploaded to its cloud storage, I don't trust third parties that I don't know having my files. And I don't want to have to encrypt every file before uploading, then decrypt after downloading.

Let's not forget, my available income is $40 per month. An $89 hard drve has a three-year warranty and will probably last longer than that.

[Flack]

Mega and Dropbox encrypt your files by default. If you don't believe them or don't trust them, there's not much I can do about that.

$10/month is a sizeable chunk of a $40/monthly income, I'll give you that. If you compare the monthly rate vs how often you go through hard drives, is it more expensive?

Also, is an external SSD drive within your budget? With no moving parts, I suspect it would be much more likely to survive a drop.

Think about that Velcro suggestion!

[Casual Observer]

Plus, after Apple announced the ill-fated plan of scanning every file that was uploaded to its cloud storage

No, no, it's worse than that, they're scanning files on peoples "personal cell phones", for "child porn".

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Let's not forget, my available income is $40 per month.

I'll pay you $10 a month to regularly post to Caltrops.

[Tdarcos]

I'll pay you $10 a month to regularly post to Caltrops.

So you feel you've gotten your money's worth, how many articles, or how many words would you expect in a month, so that I post at least as much as you expect?

[AArdvark]

He's a little fuzzy on the regularly part. Give him a ten line minimum, like they do at comedy clubs

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I'll pay you $10 a month to regularly post to Caltrops.

So you feel you've gotten your money's worth, how many articles, or how many words would you expect in a month, so that I post at least as much as you expect?

Sorry, I missed your reply.

If you post a "few times a week" that's sufficient. But not, like, all on one day. So maybe five posts a week, spread out a little? I mean, if you posted there as often as you post here, that would work.

[Tdarcos]

If you post a "few times a week" that's sufficient. But not, like, all on one day. So maybe five posts a week, spread out a little? I mean, if you posted there as often as you post here, that would work.

Deal. I'll get started.

[Casual Observer]

Josey should pay tDarcos by the word like content writers. Apparently they get $0.05 per word so thats 200 words, uh oh, that won't work.