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GLBOf the Importance of a good storage and backup plan
121
I am usually not very active on forums and other social networks, but this time, I figured I would share my misfortune in the hope that it can help someone to avoid making the same mistake as me.
So, long story short, last week I decided to reinstall my system fresh.
My setup includes several internal disks, unfortunately, in my excitement, I made a huge mistake and formatted the wrong disk.
And just like that, I lost 2TB of data.
I obviously tried to recover the data, with zero success sadly...
Among other things, I lost all my Daz library.
I'm not really upset about the purchased files, as I can always redownload them. It will take some time, sure, but in the end, I will get everything back.
What makes me want to hit my head against the wall is all my scenes and the custom characters I've made. I'm not a character creator per say, but I like to customize my characters by mixing several ones and adjusting them with special morphs, textures, etc...
And all that is definitely gone.
That's around two years of work that disappeared in an instant.
You can easily imagine how frustrated I feel right now, I guess.
I was working on a graphic novel project, and it is now irremediably dead.
But as I always try to learn from my mistakes (or at least I think I do), here is the new strategy I'll apply to store (and back up) my DAZ projects in the future:
1. Storage
First, I'll never store my custom files along with my DAZ library again. Instead, I'll create a dedicated folder (ideally on a different drive).
In case it may give some ideas to others, here is how I plan to organize things:
My DAZ Work/ // main folder
- subsets/ // prepared/cutomized sub-items that can be imported into scenes
- characters/
- F - Character name/ // F = Female / M = Male / T = Trans / C = Creature
- F - Character name (wg) // with gens (actual file)
- F - Character name (ng) // no gens (actual file)
- ...
- environments/
- vehicles/
- scenes/
- project name/
- episode name/
- scene name
- ...
2. Backup, Backup, Backup
Now that's cool and all to separate my files from the DAZ library, but how can I ensure I won't lose anything again (due to hardware error or human error)?
Well, I'll just add my folder structure to my drive app with automatic sync.
That way, a copy of my work will be saved in the cloud, away from my clumsy hands.
A secondary backup could be interesting too.
Note: Since my graphic novel project can't be completed now, I will post some renders in my gallery. It's adult content, though, so not for everyone. But for those who are of age, I hope you'll like it as much as I had fun creating it.
So, long story short, last week I decided to reinstall my system fresh.
My setup includes several internal disks, unfortunately, in my excitement, I made a huge mistake and formatted the wrong disk.
And just like that, I lost 2TB of data.
I obviously tried to recover the data, with zero success sadly...
Among other things, I lost all my Daz library.
I'm not really upset about the purchased files, as I can always redownload them. It will take some time, sure, but in the end, I will get everything back.
What makes me want to hit my head against the wall is all my scenes and the custom characters I've made. I'm not a character creator per say, but I like to customize my characters by mixing several ones and adjusting them with special morphs, textures, etc...
And all that is definitely gone.
That's around two years of work that disappeared in an instant.
You can easily imagine how frustrated I feel right now, I guess.
I was working on a graphic novel project, and it is now irremediably dead.
But as I always try to learn from my mistakes (or at least I think I do), here is the new strategy I'll apply to store (and back up) my DAZ projects in the future:
1. Storage
First, I'll never store my custom files along with my DAZ library again. Instead, I'll create a dedicated folder (ideally on a different drive).
In case it may give some ideas to others, here is how I plan to organize things:
My DAZ Work/ // main folder
- subsets/ // prepared/cutomized sub-items that can be imported into scenes
- characters/
- F - Character name/ // F = Female / M = Male / T = Trans / C = Creature
- F - Character name (wg) // with gens (actual file)
- F - Character name (ng) // no gens (actual file)
- ...
- environments/
- vehicles/
- scenes/
- project name/
- episode name/
- scene name
- ...
2. Backup, Backup, Backup
Now that's cool and all to separate my files from the DAZ library, but how can I ensure I won't lose anything again (due to hardware error or human error)?
Well, I'll just add my folder structure to my drive app with automatic sync.
That way, a copy of my work will be saved in the cloud, away from my clumsy hands.
A secondary backup could be interesting too.
Note: Since my graphic novel project can't be completed now, I will post some renders in my gallery. It's adult content, though, so not for everyone. But for those who are of age, I hope you'll like it as much as I had fun creating it.
! REPORT
For your information, you are not the only one to have lost several terabytes of data.
Personally, I lost a year of data 2 years ago: my hard drive crashed and my backup was a little over a year old.
So I lost "source" files for my Daz creations but also my photos and other documents, word, excel etc.
To make a backup, there is a more practical command than copying from disk to disk, it is a command to launch under Dos, sorry it is powershell now
Here is the name of the ROBOCOPY command
To have all the parameters of this command, much more powerful than COPY
ROBOCOPY /?
The command I use to copy drive D to drive G
ROBOCOPY D:\ G:\ /E /S /XO /R:10 /W:2 /LOG+
:\robocopy2023.log
This command only works if you are an administrator of the machine
Personally, I lost a year of data 2 years ago: my hard drive crashed and my backup was a little over a year old.
So I lost "source" files for my Daz creations but also my photos and other documents, word, excel etc.
To make a backup, there is a more practical command than copying from disk to disk, it is a command to launch under Dos, sorry it is powershell now
Here is the name of the ROBOCOPY command
To have all the parameters of this command, much more powerful than COPY
ROBOCOPY /?
The command I use to copy drive D to drive G
ROBOCOPY D:\ G:\ /E /S /XO /R:10 /W:2 /LOG+
:\robocopy2023.logThis command only works if you are an administrator of the machine
REPLY
! REPORT
A Suggestion Have You looked into Network Drives or and External Drive tower to house your Files that Way You can disconnect it from your work computer and move it to the New / Refurbished computer with out the Chance of Wiping the drive as it would not be attached till needed?
REPLY
! REPORT
I am very fortunate to have learned my backup habits on a Sinclair QL computer that I obtained in about 1984. This machine had very a unreliable storage media built in, called microdrives. If you wanted to be sure of keeping anything you had to save it onto at least three microdrive cartridges. When one inevitably failed you could format it and save to it again easily enough, but those soft failures happened a lot so keeping everything on at least three cartridges became a habit to avoid losing any of my files. I eventually bought reliable 3.5 inch disk drives and an interface card, but the backup habits were well established. When I eventually got a system with hard drive space I put two of them in it and saved everything onto both of them.
My current computer has eight drives in it, four SSDs and four old fashioned hard drives; they are paired up so everything gets saved twice. For example one of the SSDs is my boot drive and another of them is a clone of it, so if it fails I can still boot my machine.
Then I have a tower in a cupboard connected by Ethernet; that is a NAS with four large drives in it for the weekly backup.
So I am still saving everything three times. I highly recommend it.
My current computer has eight drives in it, four SSDs and four old fashioned hard drives; they are paired up so everything gets saved twice. For example one of the SSDs is my boot drive and another of them is a clone of it, so if it fails I can still boot my machine.
Then I have a tower in a cupboard connected by Ethernet; that is a NAS with four large drives in it for the weekly backup.
So I am still saving everything three times. I highly recommend it.
REPLY
! REPORT
I make backups of my backups. It started because of web design clients and just naturally rolled right into 3D stuff. I even backup my art files I use to make art.
REPLY
! REPORT
The rule I was given was
At least three copies in at least two locations
I have seen way to many people with their USB backup drive sitting on the desk beside the desktop/laptop.
The fire/flood/theft or whatever will not respect that all.
At least three copies in at least two locations
I have seen way to many people with their USB backup drive sitting on the desk beside the desktop/laptop.
The fire/flood/theft or whatever will not respect that all.
REPLY
! REPORT
Thanks for all your advices.
I don't use raid drives because I find it really expensive (It depends on how important your data is I guess), and every time I had to deal with one, I ended up having issues. Maybe I'm just unlucky...
Speaking of unlucky, a second disk (an external SSD/USB this time), start to shaw signs of degradation since yesterday (instables sectors)
(backuping on another drive in progress)
Thankfully "black friday" is arround the corner...
I don't use raid drives because I find it really expensive (It depends on how important your data is I guess), and every time I had to deal with one, I ended up having issues. Maybe I'm just unlucky...
Speaking of unlucky, a second disk (an external SSD/USB this time), start to shaw signs of degradation since yesterday (instables sectors)
(backuping on another drive in progress)
Thankfully "black friday" is arround the corner...
REPLY
! REPORT
Like two years ago, I had a big problem like that. All of my drives died at the same time. I suspect the only thing that could have caused that was a malfunction of the power supply, so I replaced that. A few of my HD were under warrantee period still, so I at least got those replaced free. The data was all poof though. So much for my backup HD lol. I don't have a ton of money, so having 3 copies of TB's of data is not really an option for me. Best I can do is backing up my data I deem most important to a seperate HD once a week and hope for the best lol.
REPLY
! REPORT
My computer went out about 2 months back and faced a similar problem. My DAZ stuff was fine - well, I lost any renders I didn't upload - as it was on a different drive than the one that died (though it's apparently nearing EOL as well). Moving around content libraries can take a long time - it can easily reach well into the 100s of GBs, and some may even have over 1 TB of things.
REPLY
! REPORT
