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

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <kc1bti$j07$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
<clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes: 

> > 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.

What's wrong with using a web browser (wherever) looking at JPEG files
on VMS served by a web server on VMS.  I'm not talking about PhotoShop.

> 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.

At the Saturn stores, one can hold a barcode on a CD under a scanner and 
hear a few seconds of each song.  This application runs on VMS.  :-)

> 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 ?

The photos are on CDs to start with.  Otherwise, I tend to pull disks 
from quiescent shadow sets as ready-to-use full backups.  Before I had 
HBVS, I did incremental tape backups every day.  :-|  I don't think I'll 
go back to that, except perhaps for incremental backups, but in 20 years 
I've never deleted a file by mistake.  :-)  Now that the disks have been 
sorted out and I have some higher-capacity tape drives and tape 
cartridges (DLT etc), I will be investigating tapes soon.