Yes, let this be an example to you all...save your Bryce by installing multiple hard drives, lol.

My hard drive that I have (pretty much) just my Operating System on, died last night. Complete failure, no accessing it through windows, dos, or with my Norton Ghost disk.

Lame.

Btw, of course, this happened literally just an hour before I was to turn in an artcle for 3DWorld Mag, lol. Sigh....thtat will take a little time here, but that will get turned in.

But, the good points....I have Bryce installed on a seperate hard drive, so all my prests, and my scenefiles are all safe. ;o)

So, you newer Brycers beware! Backup everything somewhere else other than on just one hard drive! You will save yourself a lot of heartache.  ;oD

external hard drive. keep one. back up..every month. clean up, fragment..every month..no fail... even if it takes the whole day... it's worth it.
hugs.. don't despair..life can be tough..but well.. the glass is always half full even when you think it empty

Sorry to hear that agent...  Thats rough...  I got a second drive were I put all my 3d stuff on..  but still my programs are in the main 'C' drive,,,  I'm planing on buying an external drive when I can save up money...    Meantime it's CD save time everytime I get a chance...

Tom

You must have answered the phone....

Every cloud has a silver lining: just think of that new shiny and bigger capacity HDD you can fit in now :-)  I have 2 backup drives, one for MP3s and DVD projects, the other for everything else. I also burn to DVD regularly...  30c for 4.3Gb of backup is a no brainer.

I was living on risky ground for far too long and as such finally got around to getting an external firewire backup drive. I have a 160 gig drive that is formatted for the OS and a 250 gig drive that is just free space. They both have been running for two years almost continuously and thank goodness none of them has crashed yet. But the real problem was a month or so ago when they both were full. I ran out of room and was keeping several gigs of my important files on my ipod in the mean time. This is very dangerous as the ipod gets bumped around a lot and those files could have been gone in one terrifying moment. Luckily I take care of my 'pod and all my important stuff is backed up on my nice shiny 320GB firewire drive. I feel much more secure as a person now, thank heaven for techmology!

Ah, luck was with the Matrix I see AgentSmith, lol. Did it make the cha-chug-SNAP sound? My last two did.... Besides the usual CD/DVD backups, is it possible to power down a second HDD(one that backups are on), but not the first, in Windows? I have a second drive, but don't need it on during long renders.

Sorry to hear about your crash AS. Been there, done that, got the goods stashed too!

i deleted all my porn once, formatted the drive, forgetting it's got my stash on it.

drac
(decries the great format of august 2006)
((feels kinda sorry for AS))

I backed up all my prawn to a 2nd hard drive when I sent my PC in for repair once, they managed to delete both drives...sigh...;) Been a fan of backups since I lay a floppy on the surface of a hard drive. Can you say 'magnetic fields'? not even Norton could get it back (this was in the early 90's..;)

I burn everything to CD, including the free source files for Bryce 5 (and the serial number , made that mistake once, too..;) all the thousands of mats, the hundreds of skies, and everything else I've never gotten around to loading up into Bryce..;)

LOL ! I'm still recovering from my last crash. Only another 11gigs to re-install........Tough break AS.

If I ever win the lotto, it's fault resistant RAID array time. But for now I'm on the risky side with an occasional CD or DVD backup.

My Mc Afee Virus has been acting a little off lately and my first thought is: Have I loaded something bad that is trying to highjack my virus program as part one of its three parts program to my ruin..

External back up server here.  Makes a copy of all amy files.  However, I should check to make certain it's backing up my presets.

I make a date for a back-up, then do it several days before that date. I've lost so much stuff through HD Death on several occations, THE DAY BEFORE a scheduled back -up, so now I dont take any chances!!
Just been looking at a 1000Gb external hard drive, Nice but at £357 a little pricy!!!

The guy who puts my computer to rights when I call him doesn't recommend an external hard drive but he does recommend another hard drive inside the same computer that can be "ghosted" to the working one so that everything on the one you are working on is on there as well and it is just a flick of the switch if the first disk dies

Nasty business these drive crashes. Bravo for you AS for having the foresight to backup. But knowing that you are widely read with deadlines to meet it would only behoove you to have done the right thing for yourself. Most people only backup occasionally often not having the financial resources to do themselves right or the incentive. You offer a word to the wise and all those that profit from their digital existence. Now, where can I buy that digital backup tape recorder? ;^)

I've had to focus on getting my 3dworld mag commission submitted. I finally got situated so that I could get that 30mb uploaded to their ftp.

I'll get some sleep, and then disect my C drive. I'm assuming that it was hardware failure, since I had scanned it literally an hour or so before it took a dive and it was perfect. (spyware, virus, etc)

I found a few 300/320gb hard drives for around $100, gotta decide on which one to go get.

I'm going to also buy a couple of parts I need to get my old pc up and working again, so I can literally use that as a backup computer.

Might even do a little OS upgrade...since Groboto doesn't work on my Windows 2000, lol.

Yes I am running two computers right now with pretty much the same Poser and Bryce on both in addition I have someplace in the neighborhood of 200 CDs loaded with stuff I have downloaded. unfortunately I failed to catalogue my CDs now I am in a very rough time of trying to do it. Even my 300 gig hard drive I failed to catalogue. but thanks to 3Pdo Explorer  that is much eaiser.  Oh yes I know P3DO will read inside CDs but the loading and unloading is still a job.

comfort  

I back up every night (automated)--3 work computers, and once a month with the remaining 3 computers. All goes to a central computer which copies to DVD media. The laptop backup to a thumb drive. It's just a backup of important things (source code mostly), and not a complete backup of everything.

--Death at Midnight

My sympathies on your loss.

Have a NAS just for backup. The  drives should last a while since I only turn it on for backups and network rendering.

Now if I could finish that utility that would compare directories and copy over the changed stuff, I would be good to go. Its so tedious to do it by hand.

Check your hard drive temps too, hot drives do not last long.
Have a small dragon doing the 3d graphics in my machine and its just a bit too free with the flames. Had to get disk enclosures that keep the drives cool. Last time I buy/build from scratch.

I have a Seagate 300 and a Seagate 80 in external enclosures and while the 300 runs warm they never get hot even under heavy use.  I will probably never do anything but assemble my own computers but with know parts and right now that is holding me up on upgrading my main one as I am not to up on the 64 bit dual channel Processors or the correct Ram for each.

one internal drive for os and apps
one external drive for content, presets, tutorials, photos,art, biz docs.
One big  external drive to back all content, presets, photos, applications,tutorials, biz stuff and website improvements.
Once a year back up all on dvd media and store away from house incase of theft or fire.

My point exactly Ddaydreams.

Death_at Midnight, what is your profession? This might have a lot to do on how you backup your system. Usually, professional graphic artists and photographers have “multi” backup systems.

Hobbyists and newbies take a run at the mill at best.

Hi Quest
I sell Retail Boxed Graphics and business software.
But I'm also building a library of stock photos going back several years, those photos and some art  I've made if lost would severly bum me out.

I've had a close call or two with no backup in the past and learned from it.

Well then Ddaydreamer, considering your line of profesion, I'll be sure to try and acquire the ultimate sense of security. Now, do you have the financial resources?

Quote - Now, do you have the financial resources?

Seems like most years I can do a systems upgrade in January or February, but today no.

If anyone is watching this thread and desides to get an external drive, I'de get a sata drive with sata interface rather than sata with usb. The former transfers data up to three times faster and costs about the same. Just make sure you have an open sata slot or port  on your mobo or on the back of your computer.

Also with vista os around the corner. I have placed a copy of every aplication I own on a backup drive. This way I can do a clean install of Vista and install all my apps from one source drive.

Comes in handy if you get a new system also, you can just plug the application drive into the comp and start installing without looking for all the cds and serial numbers.

Main folder  named All Progams, within that a folder an application copy.
Each folder has the entire application and a text file which is the serial number(aka product key)

It took a while to organize because I have more than fifty apps, but it should payoff in time savings the first time you need it. also I think apps will install faster from a  harddrive than from a cd or dvd rom drive.

Back on my own PC now. Still rebuilding the programs back.

Turned out, this was the week to buy computer parts! I learned the Friday after Thanksgiving is called "black friday" for computer part geeks (I just read about this some days ago).

So, on Friday, I ran down to my local "Staples" store. I arrived at 5:45am, and there were already 25+ people in line, waiting for the store to open, lol.

I picked up 2 Maxtor 200Gb HDD's for $20 each.

Can't beat that with any kind of stick.

Yup, It's been "Black Friday" for a long time, due to the spike in sales, pushing retails "bottom line" into the black. That is a SMOKIN DEAL!! Congrats.

 About those 2 Maxtor 200Gb HDD's for $20 each.Cool AS
 I'll keep that day  in mind for next year.

What I would like to see is rewritable optical/magnetic/holo discs as large as 50- 200 GB...then I would be an obedient back-up maker...

I've read where the public at large may one soon be able to get their hands on blank Bluray's DVD's that hold 50Gb. It'll be a while....right now blu-ray optical drives for computers are $700-$1000, and only 15Gb & 25Gb blanks are available.

For now, I'm gonna get some dual layers, as I'm looking at 11 or 12 normal DVD's to archive up all my Bryce stuff. Newegg has some decent prices on those.

Ack. Agent Smith. Hope you had a freind pay for your second HD. The rebate is only for 1 per customer.

Got the same HD. Get one every year. Always wait for BF to get HDs, Displays, and jumpdrives.

Also got the 7.98 1gig jumpdrive. :)

Just have to go early and get in line. Stuff like that flys out of the store. We got there at 5:15 and was 50+ people back. By the time the store opened had to be at least 300 people in line.

Warning: Black Friday Survivalist, Trained in the Art of Combat Shopping. :P

Hehe...I like that last line. Think I'll put in my Cafepress store. :P

**Hope you had a freind pay for your second HD
**-Yup. To make sure I got at least one hdd, I had the girlfriend order one from Staples right before I went down to physically try to buy one. (They had the same sale deal for online orders)

Sweet.

Quote - LOL ! I'm still recovering from my last crash. Only another 11gigs to re-install........Tough break AS.

So am I!  And I'm still not over it!  Had to go back to the computer's original default and needless to say I lost a lot of stuff - including Bryce!  So I definitely have backups now!