In my "200-500mm first results" thread, Frank wrote -
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"That is so not true. I 1996 I reported for c't magazine about data storage in Banks and Broadcasting. It works reliably.
Think of having your files stored unchanged. Bit for bit.
Do not think about the media, media fail.
Do not organize it yourself.
Store the data in a reliable professional data center.
pay a monthly fee.
Keep your access and encryption keys on different physical media in different places.
That is data storage."
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I am sure such systems exist everywhere - for the military, for the government, for banks and financial institutions, etc etc and they may well be available to the public for a fee, but that is not what I was talking about. And not what I want. Surely what we need is a desktop solution to the problem of secure and long-lasting data storage, and if not desktop, then at least within one's home or office. Unfortunately this would involve "media" of some kind - my point was that such media need to be built to last. It seems probable that "hard" systems already exist - you do see mention of "military-grade" drives occasionally, and there will be other devices. Price may be a factor, but after more than 2 weeks of constant work restoring my systems, software and (non-photographic) data, I am still a long way from where I was on 12th December. If I costed my time at a modest rate of say €30.00 per hour, this breakdown has already cost me about €3000 plus all the hardware and software I have had to buy, to ensure some sort of restoration and continuity. If a really permanent solution to secure personal data storage was available, I'm sure many professionals (not just photographers) and others would consider it very carefully.
My disk failure became an almost-catastrophe because several factors came together to create a perfect storm (the numbered items are the crucial ones) :
1. The system disk was SMART-enabled but made no reports of problems.
2. Regular inspections using Disk Utility and the fsck routine found no problems.
Nevertheless, I knew there was a problem - strange behaviour, hangs, freezes, very slow, etc.
I bought and installed a new 1TB drive, intending to install a complete Time Machine backup on the new drive.
3. Partitioning the new drive went disastrously wrong, leaving the drive completely inaccessible to both Disk Utility and Drive Genius.
I contacted D. Genius who said their latest version could definitely fix this problem. I paid for a download of the newest version.
4. Drive Genius's download system would NOT download the software. Multiple attempts and email exchanges with those Geniuses all failed to bring me the software.
5. The system-drive crashed, terminally.
I removed the broken drive, dumped all the data on to an external drive from another internal drive, and tried to install the Time Machine backup on this drive.
6. Time Machine failed. There are various ways to approach a TM restore;I tried them all; I ran Disk Utility over the TM drive, and tried the restore again, several times.
Time Machine failed completely.
I gave up all attempts at machine-led restoration, installed OS 10.6.8 on the now vacant internal drive and started piecing together as much as possible of my missing software, documents, emails, e-addresses, contacts, etc etc, as I could, from whatever sources were available.
Yesterday, Drive Genius set up a direct link to allow me to download their software, two weeks too late.
I fixed the unusable 1TB drive with its faulty partitioning, and re-partioned it into system and data partitions.
I again ran Disk Utility over the Time Machine drive several times, and tried to restore on to the 1TB drive.
TM failed again.
This is where I am today.