GoMa Forum / Server down

[andylegate]

The Maintainers forum and web site is down due to technical problems. We'll keep you posted on when it will be back up.

[andylegate]

The Maintainers forum has suffered a major technical problem. The server that hosts the forum / wiki and website had all the data that was on it corrupted due to a power outage while the server was being backed up last night. This unfortunately caused the hard drive data to be lost.

The most recent backup of the forum was from October 9th, 2010. We realize that this has resulted in many posts and pms to be lost, and apologize for this.

Several of my tutorials that I posted (especially during Christmas) are no longer up and available. Please note that I will work hard to get them posted back up.

Please also note that at some time in the very near future, the Maintainers forum will be taken down again and placed on a new server, details of which will be posted later.

The Age Creation tutorials that I have on here (both for Blender and Max) will be moved to a new location also, which I'll announce and make sure people know where they are too.

Again, we apologize if this has caused any problems and are very sorry for any information that has been lost.

[diafero]

Almost 3 months without a backup?

[Tsar Hoikas]

3 months since the last backup isn't so bad compared to my own personal backup practices. If I delete something, it's gone :\

[Chacal]

Backup is what I tell my clients to do.
Sadly I don't follow my own advice (I can't afford my rates anyway...)

[andylegate]

Yes, it was up to Nyn to do the backups since the server sits physically in her house.

However with real life, etc, going on, she just wasn't able to get to it until New Years Eve. It's just unfortunate that the power went out right when she was in the middle of it.

We think we may have lost a couple of new members also. They'd been downloading Ages and posting inspection reports during Nov and Dec. But I don't think they registered to the forum until after Oct. 9th.

So I guess I need to put out a All Points Bulletin out for them! Ack, we don't want to loose people that were actually doing inspections!

But as every single one of you have said: I can't judge either. When my HD crashed and I had to install Windows 7, I lost EVERY one of my blend files!!!

[Wamduskasapa]

I have never understood why someone, who has the possibility of loosing data and needs to have a constant backup, just doesn't use a RAID configuration. Specially since the cost of hard drives have dropped so low. Personally I am using 5 - 1TB Western Digital Caviar SATA II WD1001FALS run in a RAID 6 configuration. I would seriously suggest that this alternative be considered...

EDIT: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

RAID 6 (block-level striping with double distributed parity) provides fault tolerance from two drive failures; array continues to operate with up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups more practical, especially for high-availability systems. This becomes increasingly important as large-capacity drives lengthen the time needed to recover from the failure of a single drive. Single-parity RAID levels are as vulnerable to data loss as a RAID 0 array until the failed drive is replaced and its data rebuilt; the larger the drive, the longer the rebuild will take. Double parity gives time to rebuild the array without the data being at risk if a single additional drive fails before the rebuild is complete

[diafero]

Except that RAID is not a replacement for a backup. The most common data loss is files being deleted by the user or an app, where a RAID gains you nothing.

[Chacal]

Personally I am using 5 - 1TB Western Digital Caviar SATA II WD1001FALS run in a RAID 6 configuration.

Good choice! Those are caviar blacks, so you get awesome performance, albeit with a bigger price tag.

Personally I use 2 mirrored caviar blacks for my system disk, caviar blues in RAID external disks or servers, and caviar greens for backups (at least I'm supposed to use them).

Some people say there are other kinds of hard disks, but it's a myth.

[Wamduskasapa]

Personally I am using 5 - 1TB Western Digital Caviar SATA II WD1001FALS run in a RAID 6 configuration.

Good choice! Those are caviar blacks, so you get awesome performance, albeit with a bigger price tag.

Personally I use 2 mirrored caviar blacks for my system disk, caviar blues in RAID external disks or servers, and caviar greens for backups (at least I'm supposed to use them).

Some people say there are other kinds of hard disks, but it's a myth.

All eight HD were obtained on Ebay. The Highest price paid was USD $71 the lowest was USD $55. The SANS DIGITAL Tower-RAID TR8M-BP Enclosure only cost USD $299 but was still quite reasonable. Before you ask the other three HD are used as backup HD. The enclosure controller is programmable, and allows an amazing number of "tricks"...