Journalspace is dead

[algernonsidney]

Journalspace is officially dead. Unfortunately, this was also the host for the Bidinotto Blog. The only way to recover any of this material is possibly through Google cache, unless Bidinotto kept an archive for himself.

http://journalspace.com/this_is_the_way_th..._a_whimper.html

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/02/1546214

Journalspace is dead because they had no backup plan whatsoever. They operated this way for about six years. Now, everything is gone. It's so sad because it was so preventable.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wow.

When it rains, it pours.

Michael

[Barbara Branden]

Michael, am I correct in thinking that you have saved all Objectivist Living material?

Barbara

[Alfonso Jones]

Journalspace is officially dead. Unfortunately, this was also the host for the Bidinotto Blog. The only way to recover any of this material is possibly through Google cache, unless Bidinotto kept an archive for himself.

http://journalspace.com/this_is_the_way_th..._a_whimper.html

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/02/1546214

Journalspace is dead because they had no backup plan whatsoever. They operated this way for about six years. Now, everything is gone. It's so sad because it was so preventable.

Preventable - and predictable.

One of the first mini-lectures my MBA students get from me is one about the need to BACK UP anything you care about, regularly.

I use manual backup (onto a portable hard drive) as well as internet backup (Using Sugarsync at http://www.sugarsync.com) for anything which would seriously distress me if lost. I might use a few emails or files since the last back-up, but seldom more than about one week's work.

This practice comes from bitter experience.

Bill P

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael, am I correct in thinking that you have saved all Objectivist Living material?

Barbara,

You are.

Invision Power has a 4 tier backup (daily, weekly, monthly and I don't remember if the last interval is 3 or 6 months) and we pay for the pleasure. This was the first order of the day after the hacker attack. Should Invision ever go out of business, they will provide the files to us from all 4 tiers.

You did give Kat and I a good idea, though. We might start making periodic backups on our own hard drives and redundant redundancy. (What a phrase!)

I just got a 500 GB external hard drive for Xmas, so there is plenty of room.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I just got a 500 GB external hard drive for Xmas, so there is plenty of room.

Only if you exclude your posts.

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

I just got a 500 GB external hard drive for Xmas, so there is plenty of room.

Only if you exclude your posts.

:D :D :D

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Heh.

And this isn't the only place where I write.

Michael

[galtgulch]

Heh.

And this isn't the only place where I write.

Michael

Mossberg has an article and review of an automatic backup product which is an external hard drive which evidently does the job every time you write anything on your computer. It is in today's Wall Street Journal in his usual Thursday column.

For those of you following the growth of the www.campaignforliberty.com current membership is 98515

galt

Edited January 8, 2009 by galtgulch

[algernonsidney]

There are dozens of backup products out there nowadays. Many of them are FREE.

You can get a nice external hard drive for your home PC for under $100. I backup my stuff to it nightly and keep a couple months of backups. I do full backups every six days times, and incremental backups nightly.

Offsite backup can be purchased from services like Carbonite. They give you unlimited backup for about $50 per year. Your files are backed up in real time, as they change.

Offsite backup is mainly for the event of natural disasters, etc. This is a good idea, but hard drives have actually become quite resilient. After Hurricane Katrina, many businesses found that their drives were still readable. And NASA actually did recover data from the hard drives which had been on the Columbia Space Shuttle.

Journalspace was victim to what is usually the most common reason for backups being necessary. I have often been asked: "I deleted some files accidentally, can you restore them?" I also had the responsibility of saving a corrupted payroll database. I have also seen laptop theft. Hardware failure is actually one of the minor reasons for data backup. Software problems and/or user problems are much more common.

If you have a web site, it's a good idea to back it up occasionally as well. Do you want to trust your web host to take care of this? For some businesses, a backup once a month of your web site would probably suffice. Of course, if you do E-commerce, you will want it backed up as much as possible.

What about Myspace and Facebook? Do they back anything up?

If you accidentally delete files on a Windows PC, there is a good freeware utility out there called UNDELETE.

[Backlighting]

There are dozens of backup products out there nowadays. Many of them are FREE.

You can get a nice external hard drive for your home PC for under $100. I backup my stuff to it nightly and keep a couple months of backups. I do full backups every six days times, and incremental backups nightly.

Offsite backup can be purchased from services like Carbonite. They give you unlimited backup for about $50 per year. Your files are backed up in real time, as they change.

Offsite backup is mainly for the event of natural disasters, etc. This is a good idea, but hard drives have actually become quite resilient. After Hurricane Katrina, many businesses found that their drives were still readable. And NASA actually did recover data from the hard drives which had been on the Columbia Space Shuttle.

Journalspace was victim to what is usually the most common reason for backups being necessary. I have often been asked: "I deleted some files accidentally, can you restore them?" I also had the responsibility of saving a corrupted payroll database. I have also seen laptop theft. Hardware failure is actually one of the minor reasons for data backup. Software problems and/or user problems are much more common.

If you have a web site, it's a good idea to back it up occasionally as well. Do you want to trust your web host to take care of this? For some businesses, a backup once a month of your web site would probably suffice. Of course, if you do E-commerce, you will want it backed up as much as possible.

What about Myspace and Facebook? Do they back anything up?

If you accidentally delete files on a Windows PC, there is a good freeware utility out there called UNDELETE.

Anyone in the market for a new computer might want to consider switching to a MAC.

I did several months back and am thrilled with the operating system. It's quicker, safer, more stable and easier to use than any PC I have ever had.

The back-ups are done automatically, without having to stop working, every 15 minutes to an external hard drive (extra) I purchased.

The IMAC model comes with a 20" LCD, 1GB ram and sells for about $1300. There is also a IMAC model with a 25" screen which costs more.

Everything is contained within the screen console-no tower. I'll never go back to a PC.

[Alfonso Jones]

There are dozens of backup products out there nowadays. Many of them are FREE.

You can get a nice external hard drive for your home PC for under $100. I backup my stuff to it nightly and keep a couple months of backups. I do full backups every six days times, and incremental backups nightly.

Offsite backup can be purchased from services like Carbonite. They give you unlimited backup for about $50 per year. Your files are backed up in real time, as they change.

Offsite backup is mainly for the event of natural disasters, etc. This is a good idea, but hard drives have actually become quite resilient. After Hurricane Katrina, many businesses found that their drives were still readable. And NASA actually did recover data from the hard drives which had been on the Columbia Space Shuttle.

Journalspace was victim to what is usually the most common reason for backups being necessary. I have often been asked: "I deleted some files accidentally, can you restore them?" I also had the responsibility of saving a corrupted payroll database. I have also seen laptop theft. Hardware failure is actually one of the minor reasons for data backup. Software problems and/or user problems are much more common.

If you have a web site, it's a good idea to back it up occasionally as well. Do you want to trust your web host to take care of this? For some businesses, a backup once a month of your web site would probably suffice. Of course, if you do E-commerce, you will want it backed up as much as possible.

What about Myspace and Facebook? Do they back anything up?

If you accidentally delete files on a Windows PC, there is a good freeware utility out there called UNDELETE.

Offsite backup is about more than "natural disasters" unless you count:

1) Power surges

2) Theft of your laptop bag

as natural disasters.

Specifically:

i) For the duration of the time your external drive is attached to your computer, you are vulnerable to the two being fried by a power surge.

ii) If you travel frequently and carry your external backup drive with you in your laptop bag, you are vulnerable to loss or theft of your laptop bag.

I spend less than $100 per year and successfully backup all the documents and files I create on a virtually real-time basis.

I'm not denying the benefits of an external drive for backup. I use one also. It's much faster than a network/remote solution. (The first time I backed up to a network drive, I was using (at work and at home) a moderately slow connection and it took about 2 weeks to back up the 29GB.)

But a dual system (network backup + external drive backup) is better - and costs about an initial investment of

USD $100 (for the external drive) + an additional $80 or so per year for the network backup, depending on how much you backup. That's a lot of peace of mind at the price.

Bill P

Edited January 8, 2009 by Bill P

[Robert Jones]

I'm sure that Bidinotto had a backup, because Journalspace crashed before and Robert put everything back online piecemeal. I was unaware Journalspace as such fell down; Bosch Fawstin and I simultaneously sent each other e-mails asking what had happened to Robert's site.

Now I know.