Any computer Geeks able to assist me?

[stewartingram]

I wonder if any computer geeks out there can advise me, regarding saving files on my PC?

Firstly, a rather long pre-amble to show what my set-up is. I have the proverbial Trigger’s Broom of a PC, purchased back in the 90’s though Computer Mart (remember that?) and still going, rather like Flying Scotsman with bits replaced! When it arrived, they had enclosed the new Win95 which had just been released, that shows its age. Over the years I’ve added bits, replaced things, done upgrades, so it very personalised for what I use it for. And my work, before retirement, included maintenance of computors, which helped.

Anyway, it presently consists of a mother board, with all the sound/video. etc mounted on it of course, plenty of RAM, and a number of HDDs – all of which are partitioned to increase the number of drives. I learnt many years ago never to store any data on the C drive, always put it on a separate drive, making recovery much easier. So all my “subjects”, - Photography, Video, Music, Modelling, even ordinary Data, have their own drives. And obviously, if I say download a picture, or write a Word document, it automatically saves to the correct drive when I close it.

I am running a fully updated Win10 Pro, with Office 365. I have no desire to use any other system before it gets mentioned. Win 10 works fine for me, I don’t get any of the problems I’ve heard of on here.

A few years ago, I acquired a couple of Seagate Personal Cloud devices, which I put on a nearby shelf. Though not plugged directly into the PC (say by USB), they are connected to the router and thus the PC, so effectively are external HDD. Also they can be accessed, remotely via the internet, though I never have done this. The Clouds, I call them PC1 & PC2, each have Public access, and Private access via a login. PC1 has been configured as a backup drive for the PC, luckily I’ve never had to use it, but this leads to Q1:

Q1. When the backup file is saved (automatically as per setup), is this a “normal” file, or a special one, that can only be read when the backup is used to rebuild the PC? In other words, I have a nice picture of a Deltic, saved on its P (photo) drive, and backed up on PC1. The P drive can be viewed anytime, but can PC1? I’ve never tried so I’m asking!

This week I’m doing a minor refurbish of the PC, partially because of a request from my mate John. This means I’m replacing some of the older (& smaller) hdds with new larger ones, and of necessity files will have to be moved around. That isn’t a problem for me, just a little time consuming.

I tend to think of my data (ie subject) as pre and post processed. So a photo straight from the camera, will go on to the Photo Edit hdd. Later, I’ll run it through Photoshop then save it to the proper Photo hdd P, get the idea?

These processed subjects have until this week been stored on PC2 as an external hdd, I’m now moving them on to the internal drives. So this leads me to set up a new routine for the backups on PC! – not a problem, but Q1 does apply.

I’m proposing to put the “Modelling” folder – huge amount of info with anything modelling related, including a lot of magazine scanning back to 1949 – on to an internal drive. (This is much easier than searching for the relevant copy in the loft).

This leads on to Q2:

Q2. If Modelling became the M drive, but on PC2, so that John can access it as well, (With log-in of course), I’m a little concerned about corruption of the files. I trust John, but he is human, and could inadvertently do something. Also it could be hacked by anybody! So I’m now thinking about the M drive being an internal drive, with a copy on PC1. Is there a way of making that happen automatically – even if is delayed, say once a week?

As the initial "Save" of a file is automatic when closed, a further "Save as" (for a copy to PC2) would be needed, giving me considerably more work. If I scan a years worth of magazines in a day and process them there are around 120 individual files. Extra "Save As" moves would increase the time quite a bit?

 

Apologies for the long message, but just trying to put it clearly.

 

Stewart

 

[Jonboy]

How do you take your backups from the pc to pc1, is it a copy and paste job or via software or Microsoft’s built in backup system?

 

 

[stewartingram]

It is either a Microsoft, or Seagate, software system, set up when I acquired the drives sometime in the last ten years. So fully automatic, I don't do anything. I shall be doing a reset probably later this week, when I get the new drives in and sorted. As I said in Q1, I don't even know (or remember) how they are stored!

Edited June 21, 2021 by stewartingram

[Mike Buckner]

Interesting that model railway enthusiasts, who generally resent being thought of as nerds, are happy to call computer enthusiasts geeks.

[Jonboy]

Question 1) Ok this means the files on the drives are likely a bespoke file that can only be read or restored through the backup software. This is partly because it helps the system work out changes and back them up and partly because it can compress the data and save space. You should be able to restore individual files through the software or a full drive.

 

You should Look into the software settings and determine if it’s barebones data or copy of system backup.

If a barebones it can be restored to almost any system after you install the operating system.
If a copy of the system it will likely only work on very similar (or identical) hardware, which could be a problem if an older motherboard is no longer available

 

Question 2) it is likely you could automate the backups between remote drives via the same software, but you should have several incremental backup jobs, such a daily, weekly and monthly as the system cannot tell if a save is a deliberate change or saved in error. Having multiple jobs means different restore points.

 

It would be worth creating a few random files, letting them go through the backup system, deleting them and restoring them to see how it works. We used to do it periodically at work so that in the event something went wrong we were familiar with the process, rather than adding to the stress.

I personally  like acronis backup software as although a paid software (around £30 last time I bought a license) it is incredibly easy to configure jobs and restore files.

 

 

Your backup strategy doesn’t mention an offsite backup to protect against fire, flood and other physical issues.

 

You should also be aware of the age of the drives, I wouldn’t let them get over 3 years for IDE or 5 years for Sata and that is generous with a decent backup strategy in place.

[Jonboy]

24 minutes ago, Mike Buckner said:

Interesting that model railway enthusiasts, who generally resent being thought of as nerds, are happy to call computer enthusiasts geeks.

I used to be the office dweeb…Geek feels like a step up in the world….

Edited June 21, 2021 by Jonboy

[Michael Hodgson]

18 minutes ago, stewartingram said:

I am running a fully updated Win10 Pro, with Office 365. I have no desire to use any other system before it gets mentioned. Win 10 works fine for me, I don’t get any of the problems I’ve heard of on here.

 

Well, you probably won't have any choice about that - it seems Windows isn't the Operating System to end all Operating systems after all , and in due course you'll be moving to the as yet unannounced Windows 11 

[spikey]

All i  can say is that having spent the last 13 years of my working life as a professional wedding photographer whose business was entirely dependent on the integrity of the vast number of image files stored on our home office system, both that setup and your methods would scare the hell out of me!

[Ian J.]

On 21/06/2021 at 21:12, Michael Hodgson said:

Well, you probably won't have any choice about that - it seems Windows isn't the Operating System to end all Operating systems after all , and in due course you'll be moving to the as yet unannounced Windows 11 

 

I seriously doubt a computer that started in the 1990s (even if the motherboard's been replaced since) will be able to have Win11 installed on it. It looks like even motherboards just three years old could have trouble due to TPM2.0 being a requirement.

 

As for backups, yes I agree that the back up location is probably proprietary, and you'll need to use the original back up software to extract files from it.

[njee20]

I can never get my head around this absurd complexity. Use a cloud backup service. Job done.  

[phil-b259]

42 minutes ago, Ian J. said:

I seriously doubt a computer that started in the 1990s (even if the motherboard's been replaced since) will be able to have Win11 installed on it

 

Given things like the disk drive interfaces, power supply draw, RAM standards, etc  have changed quite radically since the 1990s 'just' replacing the motherboard isn't going to have been a lot of help in keeping a computer working up to the present day.

 

About the only things you could still feasibly continue to use which go back to the 1990s is a VGA monitor (with an HDMI - VGA adaptor), the keyboard and mouse with PS2 - USB adaptors) and the physical case.

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2021 by phil-b259

[jpendle]

53 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

About the only things you could still feasibly continue to use which go back to the 1990s is a VGA monitor (with an HDMI - VGA adaptor), the keyboard and mouse with PS2 - USB adaptors) and the physical case.

 

 

 

You might find this amusing.

 

We use HP Desktop Retail/POS PC's as test system controllers. I just installed a brand new HP Flex Engage POS PC. As standard it still has a PS2 socket, albeit just the one. It also has a VGA port and Display Port, HDMI is an add on option.

 

Regards,

 

John P

[Ian J.]

1 hour ago, njee20 said:

I can never get my head around this absurd complexity. Use a cloud backup service. Job done.  

 

Two matters: privacy and data size.

 

Privacy on the cloud is practically non-existant, unless you encrypt your files before hand, in which case they can't be compressed, leading to: data size. Try uploading a few hundred gigabytes, let alone a terabyte or two, and it takes very, very long time, and likely has to be paid for. A local NAS is a better solution, with a second mirroing it as back up.

[njee20]

I mean yes, I probably wouldn’t store my list of undercover MI5 officers on OneDrive, but storage isn’t particularly expensive. You can get 5TB if storage on I drive for £3 for a year, and £50/year thereafter. 
 

For corporate DR use perhaps, but a NAS system for your railway photos? Overkill IMO, and probably more expensive too!
 

 

[beast66606]

9 minutes ago, njee20 said:

I mean yes, I probably wouldn’t store my list of undercover MI5 officers on OneDrive, but storage isn’t particularly expensive. You can get 5TB if storage on I drive for £3 for a year, and £50/year thereafter. 
 

For corporate DR use perhaps, but a NAS system for your railway photos? Overkill IMO, and probably more expensive too!
 

 

I have 30+ NAS drives.mostly over 2TB - Cloud would be cheaper but ... until recently it would have taken years to upload my photos to the cloud and more importantly, if they decide to quadruple the price and I can't afford it, then bye bye photos.

[stewartingram]

But I have cloud storage - on a Personal Cloud, via the web, but sitting on the shelf at home. Why do I need to pay more?

 

Stewart

[njee20]

6 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

I have 30+ NAS drives.mostly over 2TB - Cloud would be cheaper but ... until recently it would have taken years to upload my photos to the cloud and more importantly, if they decide to quadruple the price and I can't afford it, then bye bye photos.

Yep, fair comment, although I’d argue you just move them. I also realise the OP didn’t really want a debate on his solution, I shall stop derailing things!

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, jpendle said:

You might find this amusing.

 

We use HP Desktop Retail/POS PC's as test system controllers. I just installed a brand new HP Flex Engage POS PC. As standard it still has a PS2 socket, albeit just the one. It also has a VGA port and Display Port, HDMI is an add on option.

 

Regards,

 

John P

 

 

Not a surprise at all - its well known that PCs used for what might best be termed 'industrial processes' (as opposed to 'office work' or in a domestic environment) tend to lag behind the times. An EPOS system doesn't need fancy graphics and I guess a PS/2 keyboard may be perceived as more secure than a USB port.

 

You don't have to look too far to find examples in the railway industry to find stand alone machines still running Windows XP (Embedded) for example....

[DY444]

On 21/06/2021 at 21:12, Michael Hodgson said:

Well, you probably won't have any choice about that - it seems Windows isn't the Operating System to end all Operating systems after all , and in due course you'll be moving to the as yet unannounced Windows 11 

 

We'll see.  I have a feeling that the TPM requirement is going to exclude a lot of machines that would otherwise be able to run it.  Insisting on TPM means the usual MS coercion tactics to encourage upgrades won't be as effective and we may see the smallest uptake of a new Windows version ever on existing machines.  Wouldn't surprise me if we don't see a rethink on TPM.

Edited June 27, 2021 by DY444

[Michael Hodgson]

Well this machine has TPM 2.0 and it is apparently Windows 11 compliant.  But if they turn off support for Windows 10 in 2025, I take it I'm going to have to have "upgraded" by then whether or not I want to.

 

A lot of organisations carried on using Windows XP after it was dropped by Microsoft, on the grounds that "it ain't broke, so I'm not going to fix it".  Their tech support controlled which updates they did and didn't apply to their version of XP.  My understanding is that they don't do that with W10 - Microsoft just comes along and updates willy-nilly, saving companies the cost of a lot of tech support effort.

[woodenhead]

17 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Well this machine has TPM 2.0 and it is apparently Windows 11 compliant.  But if they turn off support for Windows 10 in 2025, I take it I'm going to have to have "upgraded" by then whether or not I want to.

 

A lot of organisations carried on using Windows XP after it was dropped by Microsoft, on the grounds that "it ain't broke, so I'm not going to fix it".  Their tech support controlled which updates they did and didn't apply to their version of XP.  My understanding is that they don't do that with W10 - Microsoft just comes along and updates willy-nilly, saving companies the cost of a lot of tech support effort.

Mainly because most organisations migrated to the 365 environment with updates pushed almost weekly across the whole range of products

[Jonboy]

The frustration with that approach is its habit of restarting what it deems to be “quiet hours”.

 

As I work from home I tend to leave whatever I am working on overnight and sleep the pc Monday to Friday, switching off at weekends. Finding it has restarted on a Tuesday night and closed 11 spreadsheets, and various other applications to suit itself was immensely frustrating (eventually I found a GPO setting that overrode it but it took some digging).

 

I also detest the one-drive autosave for office365 where you can either autosave after every click of the mouse or not at all….and god forbid you want to open a spreadsheet, manipulate some data to copy and paste elsewhere without saving the changes in the original…

[Ian J.]

36 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

The frustration with that approach is its habit of restarting what it deems to be “quiet hours”.

 

As I work from home I tend to leave whatever I am working on overnight and sleep the pc Monday to Friday, switching off at weekends. Finding it has restarted on a Tuesday night and closed 11 spreadsheets, and various other applications to suit itself was immensely frustrating (eventually I found a GPO setting that overrode it but it took some digging).

 

I also detest the one-drive autosave for office365 where you can either autosave after every click of the mouse or not at all….and god forbid you want to open a spreadsheet, manipulate some data to copy and paste elsewhere without saving the changes in the original…

 

I think that's the kind of thing that really gets my back up about what MS has done with Windows. With Win11 it's now 'our way or the highway' on so many things. Forced updates; forced Microsoft Account; forced telemetry; forced internet install; etc., etc.

 

Not that they're the only one doing so. Apple have been like that for ages, and Google are like it to. It seems to go hand-in-hand with the 'move fast; break things' culture.

 

I am so glad that when I got wind of what Win10 was going to be I chose there and then to move to Linux Mint. While Linux can be a b*gger to work with sometimes, it as least lets me control the when and where for things. However, I've had to keep a copy of Win7 in a VM to run stuff that doesn't work properly or at all in Linux Mint. Also my version of Office in that VM is only 2010, so getting long in the tooth now and as such probably won't open some newer files (thinking Access, not Word/Excel, etc), not that I've tried recently.

[Jonboy]

I am on Linux mint for my personal pc, for approaching three years and have yet to find anything lacking (partly due to Steam proton on the gaming front), but didn’t want to derail this topic into a Windows vs other options debate.

[Ian J.]

Agreed this isn't the topic for other OS discussions, but I did want to illustrate that MS and other major OS distributors are leaving users with little option but to be constantly handling change and disruption around a paradigm of more and more constraint about how things can be done on a personal computer.