[Info-vax] [OT] Home media files and backup, was: Re: SBB's

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-01-02, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote 2013-01-02 05:00:
>>
>> I started out with VMS 20 years ago.  My DISK$USER has now grown to 9
>> GB, hence replacing it with an 18-GB disk.  I initialized it with enough
>> headers and could grow it to 36 MB or even 72 if necessary.  I'm 48, so
>> I'm thinking that I won't reach 36 MB before I die.  :-|  However, I
>> moved from film to digital photography a few years ago (and even before
>> that towards the end of my film photography got the negatives scanned)
>> and like to put my photographs on disk.  I have them on CD or DVD but it
>> is more convenient to have them on disk.  Also, with a shadow set where
>> I can replace members when they fail, this might be more robust than CD
>> or DVD.  (One hears that one should copy them every few years, but if
>> something has already gone bad, then this won't help in such a case,
>> though it might prevent further loss.)  I'm now at 18 GB for this disk,
>> but 72 GB  within a few years is not at all unrealistic.  Thus, such
>> disks would find a good home here and will hopefully see many years of
>> service!
>>
>
> Now, as much as I low VMS, I (only) use VMS for things that VMS does well.
> Acting as a repository for the families files (sound, music, digital
> pictures and such) is *not* one of those, IMHO.
>

Strongly agree with this. VMS is even less suitable for viewing and
playing said media files in a fixed environment and impossible in a
portable environment.

Working with photograph sets I've shot on a day out, playing and ripping
MP3/DVD media files, etc, are all things I find easy to do on a Linux
desktop. I could not even begin to think of trying to do this on VMS.

Even with some surprising and annoying quirks (the latest one was trying
to set a simple wallpaper on a Android tablet without cropping or scaling
using only out of the box functionality :-)), the Android tablet I carry
around makes a very nice portable media playback device as well. You cannot
put a Alpha/IA64 VMS system into your coat pocket. :-)

Sorry, Phillip, but you may wish to review what is currently available
elsewhere before trying to turn VMS into a media storage device.

BTW, if something has gone bad, just use another copy of the file on a
different DVD/CD or other offline media. You _do_ keep multiple copies
of your CDs or DVDs I assume ? :-)

> I have two Netgear ReadyNAS boxes (one at home and one at the office)
> each (currently) with 4 1TB disks in RAID config. These are used by my
> wife and kids to "save" their files.
>

Given that RAID and auto-replication across devices (which I assume you
are doing between your home and office devices) protects against some
hardware failures, but not user error, what offline storage methods do
you use for backup ?

Phillip: the same comments apply to you. Shadow sets protect against
some hardware failures. They do not protect against user error.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world