Comments on: From the Mailbag: Archiving Yourself

By: Michael Kohne

Michael Kohne — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:56:16 +0000

fuzz, thank you. I’ve been looking for a tool like PathSync for some time now.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:49:21 +0000

I’d also like to say taking one copy of your backups offsite is mandatory. Buy another external drive and once a month take your backup to your safety deposit box or lacking that — a good friend’s house. Natural disasters can and do happen. I’d also recommend scanning all family photos for this same reason.

By: Rob "Flack" O'Hara

Rob "Flack" O'Hara — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:29:12 +0000

If someone wants to get rich, I came up with a great idea that would revolutionize the search engine industry; create a program that allows people to attach metadata to any file. I have a much longer diatribe that I’ve been rattling off to anyone who will listen, but that’s the general idea.

I’ve been using a program called Advanced Disk Catalog to create a software list. CDs and DVDs full of programs, music, files or whatever can be sucked into the program’s database in a matter of seconds. The program allows for exporting to several friendly formats, and has a nice built in search feature. The program does allow for user added notes and information, and if you’re archiving zip archives, it’ll suck in the file_id.diz files automatically as well.

One problem with saving all those tiny text files is that it can take a long time to build up to 650 megs (a CD’s worth) of data, and if you lose a hard drive before it’s been archives, it’s bye bye bits. Make sure you keep two copies using on of the previously mentioned sync programs. If you want to be really secure, find one that supports FTP and back those directories up nightly to an online FTP site somewhere else. Having two copies of your irreplacable files on the same computer won’t help you in a house fire.

By: fuzz

fuzz — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:21:27 +0000

Games Industry days? I don’t think we’ve heard any ramblings from those days, more please.

{btw, for syncing files, I use Pathsync
http://www.cockos.com/pathsync/
(by Justin Frankel), just in case anyone wants more choice}