Memory cards reliable enough?

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 17:29:56 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

Be very grateful. I recently dug an old Zip drive out, and it took me
3 days of research to find out how to get the old files off of it. I
have learned it is not a good idea to backup and forget.

other than finding a functioning zip drive, what else is there?

I had the Zip drive, it's the functioning part that was hard.

that's because zip drives are junk.

you're lucky you didn't have one with the click-of-death.

Indeed.

It was
an early parallel port drive, and there is zero support for those on
Win 8.1. I realized at one point that I still had a Win 98 laptop
lying about, but it still took a lot of research, and some obscure
tweaks. Running in compatibility mode was not the usual simple remedy.

a usb zip drive would have solved the problem.

And they are still available from one company that I know of, in case
anyone else has a similar problem. BTW, I meant Win XP laptop, not 98.
I think a Win 98 PC would have worked with no other tweaks.

If nothing else, there are companies out there that can recover backup
files going way back in time, even to DOS. No one wants to install Win
ME or 95 on a computer just to get old files, especially when you're
not sure that there's anything in the backups that you don't already
have elsewhere.

which is why backups need to be in a non-proprietary format and on
non-proprietary media.

then all you need to do is plug in the backup drive and copy what you
want. should the hardware interface change, get an adapter or new
enclosure.

That also happened to me - no support for an older enclosure. I was
able to work around that one.

Organization really is all it's cracked up to be. And
organizing things, including all my computer files is one project I
finally started, but it's also the project that's kept me from
anything remotely related to photography for weeks.

organization is something a computer does *much* better than a human,
with the additional benefit of greatly increasing the amount of time
you have to do more enjoyable things.

Agreed, but computers can't do anything without the user starting
things off. Disorganized, rushed people like me are always setting
themselves up for these problems.

Maybe somebody will learn something from all this. If you used old
Windows backup software, hardware, or other 3d party means, there are
ways to get those files back, but you ain't gonna like them...

Like you say, non-proprietary is the key, but it might not always be
obvious to everyone what is or isn't proprietary. I figured anything I
did in Windows was good. Silly me. I decided to also start backing up
to a cloud service, but haven't decided which one yet. They're all
about $5/month, so it's probably worth it for at least some things.

In article , Bill W
wrote:

If nothing else, there are companies out there that can recover backup
files going way back in time, even to DOS. No one wants to install Win
ME or 95 on a computer just to get old files, especially when you're
not sure that there's anything in the backups that you don't already
have elsewhere.

which is why backups need to be in a non-proprietary format and on
non-proprietary media.

then all you need to do is plug in the backup drive and copy what you
want. should the hardware interface change, get an adapter or new
enclosure.

That also happened to me - no support for an older enclosure. I was
able to work around that one.

what interface was it?
was the workaround a new enclosure or something else?

Organization really is all it's cracked up to be. And
organizing things, including all my computer files is one project I
finally started, but it's also the project that's kept me from
anything remotely related to photography for weeks.

organization is something a computer does *much* better than a human,
with the additional benefit of greatly increasing the amount of time
you have to do more enjoyable things.

Agreed, but computers can't do anything without the user starting
things off. Disorganized, rushed people like me are always setting
themselves up for these problems.

starting it off is easy and once running it does its thing.

for example, you can ask google photos to show photos of paris in the
winter and that's what you get, without having done anything more than
upload to google photos. it's not perfect (nothing is) but it's very
impressive in what it does.

for those who don't want to upload images to google, the compute power
to do that will soon be in a desktop computer and eventually a mobile
device.

Maybe somebody will learn something from all this. If you used old
Windows backup software, hardware, or other 3d party means, there are
ways to get those files back, but you ain't gonna like them...

Like you say, non-proprietary is the key, but it might not always be
obvious to everyone what is or isn't proprietary. I figured anything I
did in Windows was good. Silly me. I decided to also start backing up
to a cloud service, but haven't decided which one yet. They're all
about $5/month, so it's probably worth it for at least some things.

cloud services vary a lot in features, service and pricing.

the one thing they do well is offsite backups without the hassle of
shuttling a drive back and forth to a bank vault or friend's house or
whatever.

a cloud backup should never be the only backup, nor should any other
medium.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 19:06:06 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

If nothing else, there are companies out there that can recover backup
files going way back in time, even to DOS. No one wants to install Win
ME or 95 on a computer just to get old files, especially when you're
not sure that there's anything in the backups that you don't already
have elsewhere.

which is why backups need to be in a non-proprietary format and on
non-proprietary media.

then all you need to do is plug in the backup drive and copy what you
want. should the hardware interface change, get an adapter or new
enclosure.

That also happened to me - no support for an older enclosure. I was
able to work around that one.

what interface was it?
was the workaround a new enclosure or something else?

It was actually an adapter, which should have been even better -
Vantec NexStar. IDE, SATA, card reader - everything. But it won't work
with 64 bit Win 8.1, and that's that. I was cloning a hard drive, and
I just ended up plugging it into the computer I was cloning. I realize
this has risks, and I didn't want to do it that way, but I ran out of
patience. I got lucky, and everything worked fine. I'll buy a new
adapter next time.

In article , Bill W
wrote:

That also happened to me - no support for an older enclosure. I was
able to work around that one.

what interface was it?
was the workaround a new enclosure or something else?

It was actually an adapter, which should have been even better -
Vantec NexStar. IDE, SATA, card reader - everything. But it won't work
with 64 bit Win 8.1, and that's that. I was cloning a hard drive, and
I just ended up plugging it into the computer I was cloning. I realize
this has risks, and I didn't want to do it that way, but I ran out of
patience. I got lucky, and everything worked fine. I'll buy a new
adapter next time.

why won't it work with win81?
assuming it's usb, isn't it a standard usb mass storage device?

if it required custom drivers, it's junk out of the box.

On 7/14/2015 2:33 PM, PAS wrote:
"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2015071207534598521-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom...
On 2015-07-12 12:59:17 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2015-07-11 16:01, Alfred Molon wrote:
In the past it used to be so that you could not trust memory cards, so
you would not use too large sizes, to avoid losing all images in
case of
a malfunction. But I get the impression that nowadays memory cards are
very reliable, so you could in principle put a 256GB memory card into
the camera, and only use that for an entire trip. Any thoughts about
this?


I don't recall them being considered unreliable. Indeed we all cried
the chorus of better to get solid state memory than the small
spinning mass disks that were cheaper (and far as I can tell no
longer marketed).

There are all sorts of stories of lost cameras found years later with
all the data intact. Indeed a recent camera was fished out of a lake
6 years after it was lost and all the photos were retrieved and the
owner eventually located.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...ipeg-1.3136501


Then

there was this one.
http://www.cnet.com/news/google-reunites-lost-waterlogged-camera-owner/

That said, any electronics can fail. I bring a laptop and offload
images to the laptop as I go. There are other solutions as well that
include data tanks and uploading images to a "cloud" account on the fly.

You can even operate your own 'cloud' drive at home and send the
images there.

The trouble of course, on the road, is getting sufficiently high
bandwidth connections to the net. In some places it's hard to get
something that can reliably and quickly take off the 5 - 10 GB+ of
images one can easily shoot in a day.

This has been my travel fail safe redundant storage. It does full and
incremental backups.
http://www.hypershop.com/HyperDrive/HDU2-000.html

--
Regards,

Savageduck

When I became interested in photography and got my first DSLR, a 256MB
card cost around $80.00 and would hold about 32 RAW images from camera.
I bought a Tripper with a 30GB hard drive to use to off-load my files
once the memory card was full, I carried it around with me.

http://photo.net/equipment/digital/tripper/

The cost of the thing would have bought me three additional 256MB cards
but the Tripper holds 30GB which was large at the time. I was a newbie
so wasn't considering backing up my files "in the field", just
off-loading the files so I could use the memory card again. The Tripper
still works too. I haven't used it in some time and found some of my
original images that I took still on there. I think that a 1TB device
that can transfer at USB 3 speeds would be nice to have.


Portable WD and Seagate USB3 2Tb drives sell for about $90, lse if you
buy several. The 1TB drives cost about $60.

--
PeterN

On 7/14/2015 4:36 PM, Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Tony Cooper
says...

Like I said, it's his system and he can do what he thinks is best for
him. I just don't understand the logic.

An extra thumb drive with the same Gigabyte capacity of the card is
less expensive if he wants just an extra copy.

The extra drive costs money and you have the additional step to copy the
images to the drive. But if you just don't delete the images from the
card (unless the card is full), you have an additional copy at no
additional cost and no additional effort.


See my response to PAS. a 1TB drive costs $60. what you are doing is
good if it's working for you.

--
PeterN

On 7/14/2015 5:12 PM, Bill W wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 16:57:58 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

Be very grateful. I recently dug an old Zip drive out, and it took me
3 days of research to find out how to get the old files off of it. I
have learned it is not a good idea to backup and forget.

other than finding a functioning zip drive, what else is there?

I had the Zip drive, it's the functioning part that was hard. It was
an early parallel port drive, and there is zero support for those on
Win 8.1. I realized at one point that I still had a Win 98 laptop
lying about, but it still took a lot of research, and some obscure
tweaks. Running in compatibility mode was not the usual simple remedy.

If nothing else, there are companies out there that can recover backup
files going way back in time, even to DOS. No one wants to install Win
ME or 95 on a computer just to get old files, especially when you're
not sure that there's anything in the backups that you don't already
have elsewhere. Organization really is all it's cracked up to be. And
organizing things, including all my computer files is one project I
finally started, but it's also the project that's kept me from
anything remotely related to photography for weeks.

Whatever floats your boat. ;-p

--
PeterN

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 19:32:36 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

That also happened to me - no support for an older enclosure. I was
able to work around that one.

what interface was it?
was the workaround a new enclosure or something else?

It was actually an adapter, which should have been even better -
Vantec NexStar. IDE, SATA, card reader - everything. But it won't work
with 64 bit Win 8.1, and that's that. I was cloning a hard drive, and
I just ended up plugging it into the computer I was cloning. I realize
this has risks, and I didn't want to do it that way, but I ran out of
patience. I got lucky, and everything worked fine. I'll buy a new
adapter next time.

why won't it work with win81?
assuming it's usb, isn't it a standard usb mass storage device?

Good question. It is USB, and I believe class compliant, but the
computer would never recognize the drive. I don't remember ever having
to install drivers for it. I think it's a firmware problem.

if it required custom drivers, it's junk out of the box.

I talked to the mfr., and there is no support for this adapter with
Win 8.1-64, and no drivers, no firmware update. Junk is exactly what I
think of it. I've never been too impressed with Vantec, but that's
what was available when I needed one. No more, if I can avoid them.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 19:44:48 -0400, PeterN
wrote:

On 7/14/2015 5:12 PM, Bill W wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 16:57:58 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

Be very grateful. I recently dug an old Zip drive out, and it took me
3 days of research to find out how to get the old files off of it. I
have learned it is not a good idea to backup and forget.

other than finding a functioning zip drive, what else is there?

I had the Zip drive, it's the functioning part that was hard. It was
an early parallel port drive, and there is zero support for those on
Win 8.1. I realized at one point that I still had a Win 98 laptop
lying about, but it still took a lot of research, and some obscure
tweaks. Running in compatibility mode was not the usual simple remedy.

If nothing else, there are companies out there that can recover backup
files going way back in time, even to DOS. No one wants to install Win
ME or 95 on a computer just to get old files, especially when you're
not sure that there's anything in the backups that you don't already
have elsewhere. Organization really is all it's cracked up to be. And
organizing things, including all my computer files is one project I
finally started, but it's also the project that's kept me from
anything remotely related to photography for weeks.

Whatever floats your boat. ;-p

It's driving me up the wall. I feel like throwing everything out the
window, and starting over.

In article , Bill W
wrote:


It was actually an adapter, which should have been even better -
Vantec NexStar. IDE, SATA, card reader - everything. But it won't work
with 64 bit Win 8.1, and that's that. I was cloning a hard drive, and
I just ended up plugging it into the computer I was cloning. I realize
this has risks, and I didn't want to do it that way, but I ran out of
patience. I got lucky, and everything worked fine. I'll buy a new
adapter next time.

why won't it work with win81?
assuming it's usb, isn't it a standard usb mass storage device?

Good question. It is USB, and I believe class compliant, but the
computer would never recognize the drive. I don't remember ever having
to install drivers for it. I think it's a firmware problem.

if it required custom drivers, it's junk out of the box.

I talked to the mfr., and there is no support for this adapter with
Win 8.1-64, and no drivers, no firmware update. Junk is exactly what I
think of it. I've never been too impressed with Vantec, but that's
what was available when I needed one. No more, if I can avoid them.

what's to support? if it's mass storage compliant, it just works.
that's what being compliant means.

apparently it's not.