Ima do this finally (consolidate old HDD backups)!

[tcsenter]

So for like 18 years now (on a side note, WOW), I have not been very disciplined in housekeeping of my backups and archived stuff. I fell victim to the trap, where instead of pruning things down, just buy a bigger drive and keep everything! Not all of it is a matter of being undisciplined. e.g. I compiled a huge archive of device drivers, applications, firmware and BIOS updates, OS patches, service packs, and ISOs, which at one time were not as old, but have since become thoroughly ancient. I don't think I need to keep the old DOS/Win9x drivers and utilities for the Sound Blaster cards, anymore. Or AGP cards from like 2002. etc.

This mess is stretched across five hard drives, ranging from 60GB to 320GB, two being PATA!

Actually more than that, because I have four or five burned DVDs with stuff on them, too. There is a lot of duplication, so I predict a duplicate file finder in my future. Wish me luck, I have a feeling this is going to really suck!

 

[SlitheryDee]

You know, I'd probably just toss the whole lot. I mean, if a hard drive can gather dust for years without me ever needing the data on it, I probably can do without it. That's just me though.

 

[MongGrel]

You know, I'd probably just toss the whole lot. I mean, if a hard drive can gather dust for years without me ever needing the data on it, I probably can do without it. That's just me though.

I tend to agree myself.

I have 4 old Raptor 70's I think I'm just going to toss soon.

Put SSD's in a few things to replace them, I really don't think they are worth messing with anymore, and had long lives in their day.

Most drivers etc on those are just inclusive these days I'd think, or just not needed like SlitheryDee said if you haven't needed them since then.

 

[deanx0r]

I love watching weird shit like data hoarders.

Keep us updated!

Seriously tho, unless those are important documents or photos, I wouldnt even bother if you let the drives gather dust over the years. I ran into some similar issues years ago with optical storage then hard drives just laying around. The problem was that the data wasnt always accessible and I was wasting too much time hoarding everything. My solution was to grab a synology box and dump everything there.

 

[tcsenter]

Well it's more complicated than that. A couple of these drives were not a dedicated archived drive. What I would do is, I would decide to get a new hard drive, format and install Windows on the new drive (clean), then attach the old drive to the system, copy back some things that I knew I would use frequently but keep the rest on the other drive. So I'd be using both drives and not consolidating either of them.

One of these drives was in USB2.0 external enclosure and plugged regularly, I took it out because the enclosure interface/controller was going wonky (the drive seems to be fine). I purchased one of those USB3.0 Dual Drive Docking Stations. I forgot that I also had an 80GB 2.5" laptop HDD in an external enclosure, that only has 8GB free. So make that six hard disks. I may find another that I forgot about!

 

[JimmiG]

Data hoarding is a serious issue. I basically have two options right now - Either buy another 4TB drive, or stick with my current ~8TB total and just start deleting stuff.

The problem with deleting data is that it's so difficult to free up any meaingful amount of space. Sure I can delete this 20MB .zip file, but what does it matter? So you end up having to comb through hundreds of thousands of files for it to add up to a significant amount of data.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I used to make a regular archive CD of stuff that I no longer actively need but still want to keep. Then storage got so cheap that I just keep that stuff on spinning disks and grow my raid arrays as needed. I should still look into cold archival though, just something I kinda stopped bothering with.

In fact I should look into archive grade bluray discs or something, and also rearchive the old CDs I still have. It's kinda crazy to think I still have some of those and they are probably over 10 years old now. So much nostalgia if I was to load one of those up. I recall reading that CDs start to degrade after 10 years so I should probably get on that.

For example I actually have some old copies of my websites. Before a huge revamp I save everything and archive it, mostly for the nostalgia purpose of being able to go back but also as a backup initially. But now with php/dynamic sites it's harder to do that so some sites I never bothered doing that. But I recently discovered a cool feature in Firefox. Alt+F2 and type screenshot --fullpage. Going to have to go through my sites and do that and save up an archive of some pages and stuff.

Data storage is so cheap now, I find reasons to hoard data.

 

[tential]

I love watching weird shit like data hoarders.

Keep us updated!

Seriously tho, unless those are important documents or photos, I wouldnt even bother if you let the drives gather dust over the years. I ran into some similar issues years ago with optical storage then hard drives just laying around. The problem was that the data wasnt always accessible and I was wasting too much time hoarding everything. My solution was to grab a synology box and dump everything there.

7 drives, 32 to currently. I'm a data hoarder. I measure data in length til I will be out of space and need a new drive. Will be at 42 tb by the end of the year. At least lol.

 

[Kaido]

So for like 18 years now (on a side note, WOW), I have not been very disciplined in housekeeping of my backups and archived stuff. I fell victim to the trap, where instead of pruning things down, just buy a bigger drive and keep everything! Not all of it is a matter of being undisciplined. e.g. I compiled a huge archive of device drivers, applications, firmware and BIOS updates, OS patches, service packs, and ISOs, which at one time were not as old, but have since become thoroughly ancient. I don't think I need to keep the old DOS/Win9x drivers and utilities for the Sound Blaster cards, anymore. Or AGP cards from like 2002. etc.

This mess is stretched across five hard drives, ranging from 60GB to 320GB, two being PATA!

Actually more than that, because I have four or five burned DVDs with stuff on them, too. There is a lot of duplication, so I predict a duplicate file finder in my future. Wish me luck, I have a feeling this is going to really suck!

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Storage-STDT8000100/dp/B00R45V3SW

http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Converter-Activity-Support-EC-AHDD/dp/B00CPGYNV4/

https://www.backblaze.com/

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

http://www.voidtools.com/

 

[tcsenter]

Enablers are enabling! I got a late start yesterday and ran out of steam, everything started looking the same. I only got one drive done. lol

I have a ton of datasheets, specifications and standards, programming guides, whitepapers, and stuff like that for chipsets, processors, power supplies, DRAM, etc. Some of which are confidential and not available publicly, going all the way back to like AMD K7 and shit.

Anybody want them?

 

[edro]

My 2TB NAS recently died (WD MyCloud), about 6 months after I consolidated all data onto it.
Luckily, I still kept all the old HDDs.

I have spent the last few weeks combing through data to delete as much as I can (old ISOs, duplicate photos, worthless videos, etc.)
I am now uploading everything to the cloud. (Google, Amazon, etc.)
Pics/videos/docs are going to Google Drive. $2/mo for 100gb.
MP3s are going to Google Play.
Another copy of pics/vids are going to Amazon (free /w prime)

The cloud is the future and no risk of disk failure.
It would suck to lose your account somehow though...

 

[purbeast0]

My 2TB NAS recently died (WD MyCloud), about 6 months after I consolidated all data onto it.
Luckily, I still kept all the old HDDs.

I have spent the last few weeks combing through data to delete as much as I can (old ISOs, duplicate photos, worthless videos, etc.)
I am now uploading everything to the cloud. (Google, Amazon, etc.)
Pics/videos/docs are going to Google Drive. $2/mo for 100gb.
MP3s are going to Google Play.
Another copy of pics/vids are going to Amazon (free /w prime)

The cloud is the future and no risk of disk failure.
It would suck to lose your account somehow though...

you do realize "the cloud" is just a bunch of other computers you're storing your shit on, right?

 

[edro]

you do realize "the cloud" is just a bunch of other computers you're storing your shit on, right?

You understand the difference between a single local HDD NAS and a mega corporation with the best backup solution on the globe, right?

Update your backyard thread!

 

[purbeast0]

You understand the difference between a single local HDD NAS and a mega corporation with the best backup solution on the globe, right?

Update your backyard thread!

lol just updated it just for you.

 

[Kaido]

Enablers are enabling!

:awe:

I don't mind digital hoarding, because I can stick all of the files in a folder called "Archive" on a large backup drive, have it be searchable (Everything Search, UltraFileSearch, Spotlight, etc.), and have it be backed up online automatically to Backblaze for $5 a month. That way I know I have a copy & a backup copy of everything somewhere, and it's accessible via search, so that keeps it accessible but out of the way, and gives peace-of-mind.

 

[K7SN]

I have all my work (I'm a scientific programmer) back to the 60s backed up on mylar punch tape, from the 70s on eight inch floppies (Dec), the 80's on various mini-tap drives and the 90s various media storage including Iomega Zip drives. I would migrate my older code to the newer storage method except my mylar punch tape from the 60s which I would need a teletype to read into a more modern. By the time CDs were proven I had migrated all of my code to a duo-back of CDs, one keep at work and one keep at home (About fourty CDs for the date with a equal back up at a different location. I moved this stuff to DVDs and now have about 16 (each two copies one at a friends house) and all zipped on a five TB on line. I still have all the original media and devices boxes away. You'd be surprised when you might need a algorithm you coded in 1992 with the help of a russian speaking post docurate because Chebyschev's work was never translated from russian to english. I can lay my hands on the original K&R C code I wrote in two minutes and convert it to C#, Java, Pearl or whatever I'm using at the moment. I hate to have to repeat a development process.

I suspect not everone has a need for earlier development code or old data; as my EE friend says "if you haven't used it in the last two years, you don't need it anymore." While I think she needs to add the modifier probably won't need it.

While I am surprised how much I relie on old code (tight code still requires pointers and creae data access, especially if it needs to fit on a 2K rom) and I do so damn much windows net programming nowadays it helps to review what I did 30 years ago in FORTRAN or K&R C to get back to speed on old talents.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

60-320gb? I'd trash them lol.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I still get sad sometimes thinking about all the hard drive failures I had from 2000 (first computer) to ~2006. I have a little data here and there from that period, mostly stuff emailed to myself or uploaded to Photobucket, plus a few stray CD-Rs, but a lot of it is gone for good. I need to buy a few new hard drives tbh; used to take me forever, but now I'm nearing full on my 1TB drive, and it's only filling faster these days.

 

[rh71]

Using old drives on external enclosures to act as family pic/video backup. Redundancy is good.

 

[tcsenter]

It's exactly like hoarding, except well, I swear there is some perfectly good stuff in there somewhere that hasn't been affected by drainage from six year-old pizza and decomposing cats!

 

[maddogchen]

You should look at my mp3 collection, tons of duplicates, and many are in different name formats. such a headache, I don't even bother.

 

[Pulsar]

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Storage-STDT8000100/dp/B00R45V3SW

http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Converter-Activity-Support-EC-AHDD/dp/B00CPGYNV4/

https://www.backblaze.com/

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

http://www.voidtools.com/

I like these.

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-...438899257&sr=1-5&keywords=startech+usb+3+raid

Or this one:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-...438899257&sr=1-9&keywords=startech+usb+3+raid

Raid, Fast, and any USB capable router will make it network ready. I'm running 6 of them in my nighthawk router through the USB. Love every second, and they're cheap enough to just add more when one fills up. Most USB enabled routers will accept a powered hub so you can just keep adding and adding. At USB 3 speeds, the wireless will almost always be the limiting factor in transfer speeds.

 

[Pulsar]

You should look at my mp3 collection, tons of duplicates, and many are in different name formats. such a headache, I don't even bother.

That's why you grab a program like musicbrain picard that will identify and label the songs FOR you. Then you sort and delete duplicates in a couple minutes.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

That's why you grab a program like musicbrain picard that will identify and label the songs FOR you. Then you sort and delete duplicates in a couple minutes.

Damn I gotta try that when I get home.

I've been wanting to set up some sort of back up for my data drives but I really don't want to put $2-300 on it. I just moved all my important pictures and stuff to my Microsoft OneDrive and said fuck it.

 

[maddogchen]

That's why you grab a program like musicbrain picard that will identify and label the songs FOR you. Then you sort and delete duplicates in a couple minutes.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.