Computer completely died. No recovery possible.
Tonnichiwa
🖼️ 16 images Surveyor
Hi everyone. I just wanted to let everybody know that today my computer completely died and I don't have any money to fix it. Because of this I will be taking an extended break. The only way I can get on the internet now is with my cell phone. So my youtube channel is also not going to be updated until I can find a way to get another computer. So I'll be reading the boards once in a while but that is probably all. See ya around the boards.
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~Dogtag
(But don't assume that the one you see today will still be there tomorrow. They do sell through fairly quickly.)
https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops
I've got all of the CC3+ programs installed but I only installed the CC3 with the programs that are not yet available for CC3+.
The bad news is there was no recovery possible for the old hard drive. So I lost every map I've ever made on CC3 or CC3+.
I also learned that Windows 10 stopped supporting Movie Maker so I'm still searching for a good free movie making program so I can continue to make the video's for my YouTube channel. Most of the free ones I've found want to put a watermark on your video for some reason, or they don't import to YouTube using mp4.
And I have to try to re-create a map I was making a city tutorial for. Sheesh!
But honestly I'm just grateful to have CC3+ again and a new computer that isn't broken
Personally, I backup my files multiple times per day, and keep old versions for 10 years, and keep backup on multiple different locations, both local and remote. (This is probably overkill for most though)
Good to hear you are up and running with a new computer though.
But I admit I am really bad about backing things up. I've got to start doing that.
I just had a hard drive die - and die hard - two weeks ago. All the data files that matter, the stuff that changes regularly, I keep on the Google Drive, so there were zero concerns there. I use a disk imaging package (the one I use isn't free, but DiskImageXML from Runtime supports 64 bit now, and is free for personal use, though more complicated to completely automate) for system backups, which is set up to do a complete image to an external drive if I leave it on when I go to bed. Fortunately, I had done this a couple of days before the drive died. It actually took longer for me to figure out it was the drive and not the motherboard than it did to have a completely restored system.
The set up on it was a little bit of work, but once that was done, all I have to do is leave the computer on at night. It's all automatic from there.
Important safety tips:
Keep your backups on completely separate hardware. An external drive, a flash drive, a cloud drive, something that won't be affected if the main computer dies. If it really matters, use portable media, keep (at least) two separate copies, and keep one of them somewhere else at all times.
Ideally, keep it physically disconnected from the computer when not actually making a backup. A lot of malware - especially ransomware - looks specifically for backup files.
Keep more than one backup. If you overwrite your only backup each time, and the backup fails, you have zero backups. And it isn't always easy to tell that's happened.
Test your backups. Go in and pull out a file from time to time, just to be sure it works. Boot to the boot disk, to make sure you have everything you need. The old cliché is "Nobody cares if your backups work, only if the restore does."
Thanks guys!
@Lorelei: Thanks, now if I can just get started on a map!
@Quenten: Thanks. As soon as I get my movie editor figured out I will start making them again.
@JimP: You computer guys always seem to have the answers to my mistakes :P
There are two different kinds of backups. The better one (from a technical standpoint) is a complete system backup. That way, if the computer dies, you do a complete restore and you don't have to reinstall everything. Unfortunately, that takes way more storage space than anybody will give you for free. External hard drives in terabyte+ sizes can be had for under $100, but I'm guessing that's not gonna happen right now. (If you find you want to do that later, feel free to ask. Once you have the external drive, decent imaging software is free.)
For data (only) backups, you want cloud storage like Monsen is talking about. The three best known services (and least likely to disappear) are DropBox, OneDrive and Google Drive. All are very similar.
DropBox has a good reputation, and has been around a long time with a good reputation. But they only give you 2 GB for free.
OneDrive has the advantage of being included in Windows 10 (assuming that's what you have). All you have to do is find the OneDrive folder and save stuff there. They give you 5 GB for free (I think, it's hard to tell, and they've lowered it recently).
Google Drive gives you 15 GB for free, but you have to install their desktop app for it to work like OneDrive (where you just have a folder like any other, but it gets synced to the cloud). And in my experience, it's not 100% stable, though it's not really a problem as long as you know how to restart it (and rebooting always will). it has some quirks that can be annoying, but as long as you know what's going on, it's not really a problem.
They're all very similar. You end up with a folder that you save stuff you want backed up into, and it syncs automatically. Save (or update) a file there, and it's synced within a few minutes with no further attention from you. You can access it from anywhere. Google Drive, you can log in from any computer with a web browser (and from any operating system), and access the Drive folder without having to install anything. (I suspect you can with the other two, as well, but I don't know for sure.) You can also share files with others, either by email account (and again, I suspect the others have similar capabilities) for specific people, or with anybody who has the unique URL for the file. All of them, I believe, keep multiple versions of files (though not for all that long, as Monsen mentioned).
Google Drive accounts are part of a Gmail account, which includes a raft of other stuff. One of the other things is Google Sites, or free web pages (you have to dig to find it, but it's still there). This is an easy way to throw an image up somewhere so you can share it here (or wherever on the web). (It's limited to 100 MB per site, but you can set up multiple sites. What you put there goes towards your 15 GB total limit, though.)
I use Google Drive, because it works well for me, and for you, it has three times the free storage of the next most generous one.
If you have a few extra bucks, you can also pick up a flash drive. A 16 GB one is usually under $10. Best if you find one at a local store, because on Amazon the shipping is usually more than the price of the drive itself. Ideally, it's not at all a bad idea to use both cloud storage and a flash drive (or external hard drive), so that you have two copies of the important stuff that are completely independent of each other.
I also have all three of those services as I have used Dropbox and Google Drive for years for other things, not backing up my computer files. But this is my first time with Windows 10 and OneDrive. Thank you for giving me some specifics. I appreciate that.
I've not been checking this thread till right now. Thought it had new comments only because people were continuing to express their sympathies, and totally missed the moments when your name must have been showing as the last person to make a comment!
New computer? Brilliant! and it sounds like a mean machine
Trying really hard not to think about the files of the past
Looking forward to a recommencement of your mapping
Of course, I do have some small thumb drives. The first one I boguht was 128 megs. Then I got a bigger one, 256 megs.
Be careful on external drive enclosures as some aren't for holding hard drives and copying files back and forth. I boguht one and it wiped my hard drive I put in it. The thing was for holding hard drives for that company's backup sftware. so I lost that data. Fortunately I had backed it up using my external usb hard drives. No, the box it came in didn't make that clear.
I'm far from a techie, but I personally use an external hard drive for backup (actually, I have two). Back in the day I used Carbonite, and it was good to have in a catastrophic tech event (which I did have), but otherwise, I didn't find it very user-friendly.
As for Windows 10 and MovieMaker, no, they don't support it any longer but I installed it on my Win 10 system and still use it. There are probably similar free products out there, but for now, MovieMaker still works for what I need to do.
@ JimP: Thanks
@ ScottA: I wish it did for me. it will do still images just fine but I can't get it to edit movies. It just goes black. I've heard of lots of other people having the same problem with it.
MovieMaker
JimP: 128 meg is the same size as the flash drive on my Swiss Army knife. (Sadly, it doesn't work any more, despite how nearly indestructible flash drives are.)