This time last year...

[milateket]

It was about this time last year, just after getting my lights up, I hooked the 'ol computer up to complete the circuit. Within a few days I had a complete unrecoverable hard drive crash. EVERYTHING GONE. I had no backups. I had put together some of my own sequences from scratch. They were gone too. I posted here and on a couple of forums telling my story and looking for a little generosity. 

There were a number of people that helped me out by sharing sequences. I spent many hours fitting these sequences into my show. I was even making little tweaks into the new year. I thanked you all at that time as you really did save my ass. I just want to thank you again! I know we all work hard on our displays and for those of us who do write sequences we know the time it takes to make one. Those that did share with me last year I want you to know that a year later it is still appreciated!

This I have learned:
BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE
HAVE TWO OR THREE COPIES OF FILES ON THUMB DRIVES

[scubado]

Thanks for the reminder, I was about due for a backup.  Even some of us that have been around awhile may forget or put it off for awhile longer.

[morden11]

Carbonite has saved my rear end several times.  It's fire and forget backup as well (subscription fee annually but nominal).  If you have not looked at it, I urge you to do so.  It's cloud based storage and they have among the best customer service of any entity I've worked with (regardless of industry).  No more hard drives, no more thumb drives, and you can access it from any computer with an internet connection (provided you have the login credentials).

 

I'm new in LOR town and am glad to see such a supportive and caring user community. 

 

-Elye

[TonyD]

Carbonite has saved my rear end several times.  It's fire and forget backup as well (subscription fee annually but nominal).  If you have not looked at it, I urge you to do so.  It's cloud based storage and they have among the best customer service of any entity I've worked with (regardless of industry).  No more hard drives, no more thumb drives, and you can access it from any computer with an internet connection (provided you have the login credentials).

 

I'm new in LOR town and am glad to see such a supportive and caring user community. 

 

-Elye

 

I use Carbonite too. All my digital pictures and videos are up there too. Remember even if you have a backup copy on another disk drive that doesn't protect you in case someone decides to steal all your computer equipment or you have some kind of disaster at your house and those backup copies are lost too. I have almost 300GB backed up and yes it would take a really long time to get it back (I would probably pay them to send me DVD's) but that doesn't really matter as long as I do get it back eventually.

[nmiller0113]

Dropbox or Google Drive work well too.  I actually use my own hosted service with OwnCloud (At a remote location), which is pretty much the same thing but can be hosted by you so it is free, and tell LOR during setup to store everything on it.  I use two computers.  One for sequencing and another for show and both of them sync to the same account and have LOR installed the exact same way.  Then we I make a new sequence it is pretty much immediately available to the show computer.  So it makes adding a new show I just completed very easy.  It also makes replacing the show computer pretty quick and painless should it die.  Hope this helps some of you as well!