backup lesson #408

[jesse_the_k]

I've been so proud of my careful backup strategy, alternating complete backups between two 1TB drives, plus selective agglomerating backups to disk images on the drive. But still, my laptop was getting sort of full, and therefore all my programs were operating slowly. (OS X swaps files in and out of memory in big fat chunks, but my hard drive was only offering small skinny chunks as destinations.)

 

I grabbed a nice free utility called Grand Perspective, which provides an overview of file size and disposition. Clearly my movies were the easiest to address; they were principally fandom downloads. Around 150 vids and then around a dozen less-known not-available-on-DVD gems like Thoughtcrimes and Buried on Sunday.  So I carefully moved all those files to one of my big drives.

And ever so inadvertently erased them all in the past week. * sigh *

 

Should I attempt to snag them again, or could this be the start of letting go of my hoarding nature?

Both of those movies are worth watching, BTW. The first stars Navi Rawat as a visionary telepath (backed up by a goofy Joe Flanigan, which is why I originally downloaded it). The second stars Nova Scotia, plus a young, smooth Paul Gross, as well as the usual postage stamp of Canadian-actor bingo. It's funny and sad at the same time: the fishery collapse was in sight, but not yet a reality.

Comments

[benet.livejournal.com]

Ack, I'm sorry!

I love Buried on Sunday. I saw it in the theatre, and when they announced they were pointing one of the warheads at Canada's Wonderland, a huge cheer went up. I didn't hear the like until Toronto City Hall was nuked in one of the Resident Evil movies.

[zizi_west]

Oh, no! Sorry. Despite the file loss, I admire your well-planned backup strategy. I thought that I was doing well by finally managing to set up 1 external drive. Obviously I need to get serious about it.

Even if you don't decide to replace all/most of the files I can understand wanting to replace at least some of them.

[elizabethth.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Sympathies!

If you still enjoy watching them, snag them again.

[axelrod]

Partly this is because I've never had a lot of hard drive space or back-up bigger than 16 GB, but my habit is to delete most things pretty soon after watching them. In almost all cases, the things I download are easy to find again.

A good decluttering rule is this: when did you last use the object? In this case, when did you last watch a given movie or show? Or burn it for a friend? Or whatever. Just because it's not taking up physical space doesn't mean it's not a burden in some way - on your hard drive, on your back up drive, on your mind. The latter most of all.

I'm currently keeping the first season of Glee on my hard drive because it's very effective at taking me out of myself when I'm depressed and want to be able to watch it even in the event of no internet connection.

I was upset when I thought I'd lost my icon collection, but that's bc it's a collection and represents however many hours on comms for fandoms I'm no longer in and it has genuine nostalgic value, esp the icons I once used a lot and no longer have uploaded and the Naruto icons bc that was my first big fandom after Harry Potter and I met a lot of my current online friends through that fandom.

I'm up in the air about music I haven't listened to in a while. It always turns out that three months later I *really* wish I'd saved that one song but I never get around to downloading it again.

[duskpeterson]

Ack! My complete sympathies. I'm trying to rescue files off a dying 50-gigabyte computer. The only place to put them is a 25-gigabyte computer. So I've been having the same feeling of, "Maybe this is a sign from heaven that I need to let go of some of my electronic possessions."

"Both of those movies are worth watching, BTW."

If you're thinking, "Maybe I should watch this again," it's probably a sign that you should. But if you're scratching your head, trying to remember what you downloaded, that's probably a sign that it's not worth tracking down again.

Incidentally, have you considered online storage? Dropbox (and probably other storage places) have ways to recover deleted files.

[primroseburrows]

Buried on Sunday is available on DVD. I don't know why the new one is 99 cents and the used ones are 84.98, but still (I have a copy myself, so I know it's actually true *g*).

[isis]

I have a copy of Thoughtcrimes I could give you. And as Prim says, BoS is available on DVD.