Lost Everything ...... Hard drive, not the beer!

[bobeer]

Ahhh that's a bummer, man.
Look ito Google Docs. Forget using a work/personal computer for spreadsheets, notes, etc... Use google docs for all that stuff. I'm still old school and write everything down in a brew log just in case something like this happens.
I hope the IT folks can resurrect your data. I work in IT and I've had to attempt a data scrape before and it's not fun or easy. Your chances get less and less every time the disc's platter rotates. Good luck!

 

[cegan09]

I'm always amused by the people who think putting anything on the cloud is a terrible idea. Are you really worried that someone might be able to see your brew files? The horror. I have two step authentication on any online account that means anything, so no one is getting in. Plus google already knows everything about me anyway.


There are only two sure fire ways to make sure you don't lose something. The first is a cloud backup. I use google drive simply because it's so easy. Install their desktop app and there is a mapped folder to use that lets you directly save and access files from the normal windows file explorer.

The second is a RAID server of some kind. External harddrives go bad too, and it really sucks when that happens. If you build the right kind of RAID, a singular disk can fail, but you can just replace it and not lose a thing. I'm going to build one eventually to replace my home server.


Paper can get lost just as easily as electronic. That's what happened to The Alchemist in VT. Their place flooded and they lost the computers and the paper backups. All of it gone. I flat out suck with paper. My handwriting is terrible, and notes often are illegible years later. Plus I lose physical things.


Of course any type of backup is better than nothing. The chances of a flood taking out everything you own is slim. I just prefer to use at least one backup plan that is fairly foolproof.

 

[Thorsbrew]

I'm always amused by the people who think putting anything on the cloud is a terrible idea. Are you really worried that someone might be able to see your brew files? The horror. I have two step authentication on any online account that means anything, so no one is getting in. Plus google already knows everything about me anyway.


There are only two sure fire ways to make sure you don't lose something. The first is a cloud backup. I use google drive simply because it's so easy. Install their desktop app and there is a mapped folder to use that lets you directly save and access files from the normal windows file explorer.

The second is a RAID server of some kind. External harddrives go bad too, and it really sucks when that happens. If you build the right kind of RAID, a singular disk can fail, but you can just replace it and not lose a thing. I'm going to build one eventually to replace my home server.


Paper can get lost just as easily as electronic. That's what happened to The Alchemist in VT. Their place flooded and they lost the computers and the paper backups. All of it gone. I flat out suck with paper. My handwriting is terrible, and notes often are illegible years later. Plus I lose physical things.


Of course any type of backup is better than nothing. The chances of a flood taking out everything you own is slim. I just prefer to use at least one backup plan that is fairly foolproof.

I'll start off by saying it's amusing that you think this is about brew logs. I have all sorts of private data of different sorts that i don't trust to anyone but myself. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but that doesn't mean mass collection of metadata and other sorts of things isn't real. Edward snowden proved that years after people insulted people for suggesting what he proved is happening. Are they going to directly target me? Likely not. But mass data collection of all sorts is very real and abundant. And i'm not taking any unnecessary chances. Similar reasons why i havnt installed windows 10. Win7 works fine for me and when games finally start utilizing dx12 i'll dual boot windows/linux and use 10 for nothing more than games. But i digress.

A Raid array still contains hard drives and unless that server is stored outside your home then it doesnt protect you from floods as you claimed.

I'll finish by saying that an external hard drive is actually pretty safe as a backup. The chances of BOTH the main system drive/drives and the backup drive failing at the same time are extremely low. Additionally i plan to get a second drive (almost an archive drive you could say) so i can have one hooked up to the system for doing nightly or even more backups and a second one i'll put in my desk or somewhere else for doing weekly backups.

The first one will be turned on only for backups once or twice a day while the second one will be turned on only weekly. In this scenario it is virtually impossible for all the drives to die at the same time especially when they are turned on so infrequently. My drive that just died went after 3 1/2 years but it was on pretty much 24/7/365. The backup drives will likely not fail under these low use scenarios.

Sure this doesnt protect me from fires but for now this is just fine for me. And if im in the house the backup drive is the first thing im grabbing while heading out.

 

[Calder]

Ahhh that's a bummer, man.
Look ito Google Docs. Forget using a work/personal computer for spreadsheets, notes, etc... Use google docs for all that stuff. I'm still old school and write everything down in a brew log just in case something like this happens.
I hope the IT folks can resurrect your data. I work in IT and I've had to attempt a data scrape before and it's not fun or easy. Your chances get less and less every time the disc's platter rotates. Good luck!

It makes it just so easy to use my work laptop for my brew notes, rather than have a separate computer, so I have to live with the download restrictions.

Maybe it is a sad reflection of my life, but I'm pretty much connected to my work computer 24/7, so it is handy to use for my brew files, since I always have it available. Easy to check things, look up information, and take notes.

The report from the data recovery group says the entire data content of the drive is in movie format, and they are unable to recover any data.

I do keep my personal files (taxes and other crap) on a different computer that does have 2 separate back-up drives. Actually I keep the data on one of the drives disconnected from the main computer until I need to access it and also on the back-up drive. So although I lost my brew files, which is tragedy, That's mostly all I lost of my personal files - It is not the end of the world.


Another problem with the loss is that I lost all information about my Sour Beers. I have about 35 gallons of wild/sour beers in the crawl space in 1 and 2.5 gallon fermenters, which are just labeled with a letter and a number ....... Without my files I don't have a clue what is in any of them, what styles they are, and what bugs were used.

 

[Thorsbrew]

As others said write on paper or if you prefer digital like you said (i do too, i cant write for crap but i can type up to 100 words per minute). Then you could bring a little flash drive with you and copy your brew logs every night and put them on your own computer.

 

[bobeer]

It makes it just so easy to use my work laptop for my brew notes, rather than have a separate computer, so I have to live with the download restrictions.

Maybe it is a sad reflection of my life, but I'm pretty much connected to my work computer 24/7, so it is handy to use for my brew files, since I always have it available. Easy to check things, look up information, and take notes.

The report from the data recovery group says the entire data content of the drive is in movie format, and they are unable to recover any data.

I do keep my personal files (taxes and other crap) on a different computer that does have 2 separate back-up drives. Actually I keep the data on one of the drives disconnected from the main computer until I need to access it and also on the back-up drive. So although I lost my brew files, which is tragedy, That's mostly all I lost of my personal files - It is not the end of the world.


Another problem with the loss is that I lost all information about my Sour Beers. I have about 35 gallons of wild/sour beers in the crawl space in 1 and 2.5 gallon fermenters, which are just labeled with a letter and a number ....... Without my files I don't have a clue what is in any of them, what styles they are, and what bugs were used.

Major bummer... The best thing about google docs is you access it through your web browser. It's like MS Office but within your web browser so you can use whatever computer you want to. It saves automatically too. Not telling you what to do, or saying you're doing it wrong, just telling you what's out there that might help avoid this in the future.

If my beersmith gave up the ghost I'd lose a lot of recipes and notes that aren't in my written log.

Here's to starting new!