# ARGH ... again ... sorta ...

### Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

#### jflis

##### Well-Known Member
Once again, I find myself having computer problems. This time it was hardware failure. The motor in my data drive hosed. It was spuratic for a while and I suspected dirty contacts on the cable assembly, but it wound up being the drive motor. I didn't discover this till it *stopped* being spuratic and was just dead...

...now it is headed off to a data-recovery-center. I don't even want to talk about it...

so..... Release of our next kit is delayed as all of the developement drawings are on the data disk. Many other kit/accessory developments are also skewed (like the 5/50 engine mount kit and the like...)

I will keep folks posted. Note, I am doing order admin by hand now so things may slow up a bit.

jim

#### kenobi65

##### Well-Known Member
I shall do the "Save The Data" dance for you, Jim!

#### OKTurbo

##### Well-Known Member
TRF Supporter
Bummer..

Been there....Done that.

Do you have a CDR/W drive? After the last "episode" I purchased a program called "Instant Recovery". It saves an image of your hard drive to a bunch of CDR disks. Yes...it takes a long time to archive your drive, BUT it's not lost forever....and CDR's are cheap.

#### slim_t

##### Well-Known Member
DVD burners are getting more affordable now and so is the media.
They'll hold about 5-6 times the data of a CDR.
And you could make your own rocketry DVD's and sell them on your site or give them away free with high dollar kit orders.
Just a thought.

Tim

#### jflis

##### Well-Known Member
whew, i finally got my data disk recovered onto a new drive. looks to be 100%

I'll go change me shorts now...

I just finished the instructions for the EMK-5-50 and have ordered documentation, so that will be coming out soon. Will now focus on the Freedom Forge Missile and preping for NSL

whew

jim

#### Hospital_Rocket

##### Well-Known Member
And now, repeat after us...

Backups are good

Backups are good

Backups are good

#### jflis

##### Well-Known Member
backups are good *and* cheap! LOL

#### Neil

##### Well-Known Member
Backups are good

Backups are good

Backups are good

We just had to wipe our old hard drive and get a new one...

All my EXTREMELY accurate, customized Rsims for ALL my current rockets that I had JUST put on there: LOST. Nearly all of my pics: LOST. All my crazy designs that are too big and I wish I never posted: GOOD RIDDANCE OK, mixed blessings... But all my fauvorites, which included 50-150 rocketry-related websites, carefully categorized into vendors, manufacturers, info sites, recreational sites (TRF ETC) and Misc, GONE.

#### lalligood

##### Well-Known Member
One of the most unheralded yet beautifully simplistic & best of all RELIABLE computer accessories to be released arguably forever is the USB flash drive (also known as several other names, not limited to but inlcuding: USB drive, Jump Drive, Thumb Drive).

About the size of a small pocketknife or an Estes 18mm motor, they come in 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, & 1GB capacities. IMHO, the 128MB version is about the best bang for the buck at ~$40. Shop carefully & you might find them for less... There's no moving parts or batteries to fail, they often come with clips to hook onto a keychain (makes for an expensive keychain but you better believe I have it on me at all times!), & as long as you have almost ANY modern operating system that has USB support--WinXP/2000/Me (native), Win98 (need to download & install drivers), Mac (native), & Linux (native). (Native means support without any special and/or additional drivers.) Just plug it in & it appears as your next available drive letter (or however Mac & Linux handle storage devices). They are fully rewritable but with none of the hassle of a CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R drive. It works every bit like a tiny hard drive. So easy to use that even the most technically challenged people can use them (read: my wife). 128MB (or even 1GB) may not sound like much nowadays but for the most part, it's more than enough to store all of your most precious personal data. And no, I don't have anything to do with any company that makes these things... I do network & desktop support for a living and I spend far too much of my time recovering people's data. When all else fails, RTFM... #### Hospital_Rocket ##### Well-Known Member When all else fails, RTFM... As the reigning alpha geek and Desktop Support Manager where I am forced to slave for APCP, you would be banished for uttering such blasphemy. Actually I can't live without a jump drive. I carry 2 one on my ID badge one built into a rather fat pen (this stops the users cold - when you install software from pen you pull out of your pocket A #### jflis ##### Well-Known Member those jump drives are pretty cool, but i'd need about 10 of them just for FlisKits and another 20-30 for my photo albums, not to mention my websites, graphic artwork, pumkin stuff, etc, etc... #### powderburner ##### Well-Known Member So you say it's about$40 for 128 mb on a USB drive

And I have a whole stack of 700 mb storage devices that cost about 4 cents each

Tell me again why I need a USB flash drive?

#### edwardw

##### Well-Known Member
Powderburner - here is my reason for having a 256 MB jumpdrive. When I'm at work/school/home and need to transfer a document to/from work/school/home the jumpdrive makes a really easy transfer. Plug in - copy and paste..leave, arrive, plug in and open.

Also, at work I do a lot of work with Architectual Desktop (Mod for AutoCAD) and it makes it a blast when you have 3 or 4 guys designing a building. You all do your part, then bring it together on one computer

It's also a good excuse to load those rocket pics and show to the guys at work

Edward

#### hokkyokusei

##### Well-Known Member
Those little flash devices are really cool (recently I saw that you can get even USB flash devices built into watches & penknives!), but I like my USB2 disk. 19Gb & the physical size is ony 1/2" x 2 1/2" x 5", which easily fits inside my jacket pocket.

As a software developer, I can carry around my entire development system, plus a large music collection, and all of my rocketry related files (pics, videos, rocksim, web site, etc...)

#### lalligood

##### Well-Known Member
Originally posted by jflis
those jump drives are pretty cool, but i'd need about 10 of them just for FlisKits and another 20-30 for my photo albums, not to mention my websites, graphic artwork, pumkin stuff, etc, etc...
I guess I should have been more clear that the USB flash drives are more for storage of dynamic data (that's constantly changing & being updated). Image files & other archival data would be most economically stored on CD-R. A second hard drive, like one of those external/portable firewire hard drives might be worth looking into if you have that much dynamic data.

There is no single "perfect solution" unfortunately & that's really a shame... That hard drive manufacturers are making quantum leaps in technology every year to 18 months doubling hard drive capacities yet we all remain just as lazy in deleting unused data & advances such as faster internet connections allow us to access more data, we store more & more stuff while maintaining that dangerous "nothing will happen to my hard drive" attitude.

But it never hurts to investigate multiple technologies/methods to prevent you from finding yourself in that position again--because it indeed sucks rotten eggs when drives die

#### lalligood

##### Well-Known Member
Originally posted by Hospital_Rocket
As the reigning alpha geek and Desktop Support Manager where I am forced to slave for APCP, you would be banished for uttering such blasphemy.
Forgive me. It was indeed a bad attempt at humor... After all, I can't think of a single decent computer manual in the past several years that was worth saving from the trash can

#### Micromeister

##### Micro Craftman/ClusterNut
TRF Supporter
Jim:
I really feel your pain! McCoy's Micro Wonder Works has had identical crashlandings in the past couple months #\$&%##@# Dang new fangled things!!!
My wife has told me for years computer's are a commie plot, I'm more inclined to believe it's the Adversary at his evil work.

I've started keeping NOTHING but the programs on the computers hard drive, seperating all data, photo and dwg files on Zip, Jazz or CD stroge discs and backups.
So far it's only cost a few days initial breakout time. I recent computer failure cost me about 3 hours to be back up and running on a back up machine. Ya might want to look into those GB size external storage drives, especially for your model design dwgs. Either way ya just gotta say "Well, their great when they work" Good luck at the Data recovery store!

#### BlueNinja

##### Well-Known Member
I think a relative had an external 1gb drive identical to a Zip or floppy disk... Wouldn't imagine they're too expensive. I think it was made by Imation.