So I have been away for what seems to be 3 months now. It has been tough as this year hit Western Carolina pretty hard with Rain since late July.
I’ve been caught in some of those storms in my commute and home and this has clearly brought on some unnecessary damage to my equipment and personal property. For one, a Hard drive I was using to store my Documentation projects and Fedora related notes was damaged. This Hard drive stored many years of other items as well and book collections. As some of you know i am a Data Hoarder and admitted Dumpster Diver, so i have have a lot of Hard drives and a 1-2-3 back up. . . The storms were unrelenting though. I was overwhelmed and was down to my last usable drive with backups and couldn’t make it to my Storage Unit to preserve it when Helene hit. In one day, I lost my last usable backup, and considerable damage to my Laptop, Tablet and hard drives.
I was crushed.
The only sensible thing to do was wait out the storms and constant rain, figure out what was wrong with my Tablet, Fix my Laptop and see what I could retrive for other drives with partial backups and online backups. The Documentation Project was not salvageable so I’m resigned to start it all over again. I was writing in 4 languages and had personal anecdotes to contribute to the project.
My art projects are fragmented. I never realized how emotional Art can be, and in what place mentally you are when you draw. This was interesting to me, but I can recover.
My comic book collection was salvageable so there is a bright side to all this. Yes, it’s important to me as I have been collecting for 30yrs ! Some old friends stepped up, and touched base with others who haven’t been in contact with for almost a decade.
To end this all, I’mm be easing back into the Forums again as I work out the last few pieces of things I am recovering. Our Digital Life means more now than ever as we keep so much on our phones, laptops, tablets and PC.
Absolutely true. I think right now it’s still viable to have an Online backup, The problems I see is some solutions are not privacy respoecting enough. Also the tools for others solutions are not fleshed out enough but can become viable. Amazon and Google are a bit ridiculous. Digital Ocean or Linode can be as well. I have large amounts of content so it’s not entirely viable for Online storage, I just need to spread out the drives I have a bit, I think.
i use physical backups and those i spread to google or proton depends on privacy and security i need. Proton Drive have good security and i trust it more and google is ok (ish) google is more on work stuff and proton is more on private stuff
i m sorry to hear things like that happened, but it is also current nature how world works.
we have had full summer Super tornados and Super storms and 2 more are coming again one landing on Type 10 Typhoon in 2 days and second one lands in 4 days after that at current estimate type 8 Typhoon worst one we had Type 14 Typhoon 2 months ago…
well 1 month more and i am moving lots of backing need to be done and then shipping
If you don’t fully trust online storage providers, you can add your own layer of encryption. I the past, people buried cash and documents in sealed containers so they were protected from fires and floods that didn’t rearrange the landscape. Electronic media are more fragile than paper documents and should be periodically update/refreshed (including newer encryption algorithms). Reputable online storage providers use encryption, replication, and measures to deal with bitrot, but ransom-ware attacks, business failures, or takeovers could result in your data becoming inaccessible.
Documentation Project was not salvageable so I’m resigned to start it all over again. I was writing in 4 languages and had personal anecdotes to contribute to the project.