#114274 - keldon - Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:59 am
I had a complete disaster. About a week ago I was organizing my hard-drive, so that meant merging all versions of my backups into one place so that everything was consistent, clearing junk from the desktop and removing redundant folders. After some time I noticed a 'd:\documents and settings', and assumed it was from when the drive was the boot drive so I erased it.
However I had eclipse on drive d, which I assumed I placed in d:\eclipse so that I could run it without having to download it and set it up again if I had to reinstall windows. However it turns out that my workspace was in 'd:\documents and settings\keldon\.workspace', and I'm puzzled to see eclipse appearing to collapse the package hierarchy!!! I thought nothing of it, I assumed I never had anything other than small test code in that workspace, and it wasn't until I wanted my graphics engine that I noticed that got lost.
The only version I had was a buggy version that worked fine in the uni JRE but exposes a bug in the AWT plus I added tweaks and refined structures. I was not happy! And worst of all I was plagued by only having a jar file without any source code and no undelete was finding those files, so the jar file was taunting me with it's speed and smoothness.
But I think my lesson is learned.
#114278 - sgeos - Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:51 am
I like put backups on CDs. CDs can live out of the way until everything works. (They should probably live out of the way longer than that. A fire might not take your CDs even if it takes your PC. =)
-Brendan
#114280 - chishm - Sat Jan 06, 2007 5:03 am
DVD+/-R(W) isn't just for movie piracy. Considering they are only a few dozen cents per disc, I suggest you just burn your entire dev folder to a disc each month (or week or night, depending on how much you value your code).
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#114282 - MrD - Sat Jan 06, 2007 5:40 am
| Quote: |
| a jar file without any source code |
You may be able to decompile that, if you need to.
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#114291 - keldon - Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:09 am
I had considered decompiling, and yes I do make backups on DVD's - but not regular enough. But to be honest I find that gmail'in some things to myself is great; not to mention the free digital vault - courtesy of British Telecoms.
And as for dvd's, being only $1 per 50 discs more but 5 times the capacity it makes dvd's a much more viable backup solution. Besides you can create multisession dvd's, but yes I will certainly be making more regular backups from now on. I used to export after every significant update/bugfix and upload right onto my server; I think I've been getting far too comfortable these days.
#114304 - PhoenixSoft - Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:51 pm
There are some webhosts who offer to host Subversion repositories along with your website. They are even cheaper than constantly buying DVDs to back up files to, plus it saves you the trouble of constantly making backups and then only having an old version when something goes wrong.
#114305 - chishm - Sat Jan 06, 2007 2:07 pm
| PhoenixSoft wrote: |
| There are some webhosts who offer to host Subversion repositories along with your website. They are even cheaper than constantly buying DVDs to back up files to, plus it saves you the trouble of constantly making backups and then only having an old version when something goes wrong. |
But what happens if the website burns down? :-p
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#114363 - PhoenixSoft - Sun Jan 07, 2007 3:47 am
| chishm wrote: |
| PhoenixSoft wrote: | | There are some webhosts who offer to host Subversion repositories along with your website. They are even cheaper than constantly buying DVDs to back up files to, plus it saves you the trouble of constantly making backups and then only having an old version when something goes wrong. |
But what happens if the website burns down? :-p |
Then you will still have the latest version of your code on your computer, plus they do extremely frequent backups that are stored off-site :p
#114457 - gauauu - Mon Jan 08, 2007 2:28 am
I've been using freepository for awhile now. It's been free CVS hosting for small projects (up to like 150 megs)....I think they may have started charging for new accounts, though.
Great customer service, totally worth the (free) price
#114465 - PhoenixSoft - Mon Jan 08, 2007 3:40 am
It looks like they still have a free account available. It says it comes with 300Mb, I wonder whether that's a typo or whether it really does come with only 37.5MB. It's a shame the free account only allows for CVS, but since it's free, it's still a great deal.
EDIT: The 1GB SVN account is now free for a limited time!
#114471 - sgeos - Mon Jan 08, 2007 5:15 am
| chishm wrote: |
| But what happens if the website burns down? :-p |
Local harddrive mirroring will more or less prevent data loss due to hard drive failure, but it won't really protect you from a fire. Chances are slim the two fires will happen at the same time in far away places- this is why remote backups are a great idea.
-Brendan
#114543 - keldon - Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:14 pm
Well I am putting regular backups back into my process. Before/after any major change in code I export an archive of the code titled projectName_yyyy-mm-dd@hhmm.zip
I will make use of the btDigital vault facility as it does allow for 2GB of storage with the ability to share specific files and folders. I did once sign up to freepository for a university project - but we decided not to use it.
And I will also make use of my laptop which is downstairs and constantly switched on to store backups too.
#114622 - sgeos - Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:17 pm
I use YYMMDDproject.ext
I'd probably use YYMMDD-HHMMproject.ext if I cared.
-Brendan
#114652 - keldon - Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:00 pm
It was a practice I built at uni, because sometimes I would do some work at home; bring it to uni, work on it, and then bring it back home so rather than using just version numbers I found the time of day was a better stamp for me.
#114654 - gauauu - Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:34 pm
| keldon wrote: |
| It was a practice I built at uni, because sometimes I would do some work at home; bring it to uni, work on it, and then bring it back home so rather than using just version numbers I found the time of day was a better stamp for me. |
I did that for awhile, but after a number of times of accidentally mis-numbering or using the wrong versions, I switched to CVS and SVN, and have never looked back.
#114706 - sgeos - Wed Jan 10, 2007 6:46 am
| gauauu wrote: |
| keldon wrote: | | It was a practice I built at uni, because sometimes I would do some work at home; bring it to uni, work on it, and then bring it back home so rather than using just version numbers I found the time of day was a better stamp for me. |
I did that for awhile, but after a number of times of accidentally mis-numbering or using the wrong versions, I switched to CVS and SVN, and have never looked back. |
Worth doing, except that sometimes you need to distribute files to testers and other people who should not have access to CVS. Giving the 070103game.rom works very well. They'll know what version they are using when they report bugs, you'll know if they have the latest "stable" build, etc.
-Brendan
#114984 - Vich - Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:59 am
I always prefer a web-solution when it comes to saving important data. Even if you backup your things on CD/DVD: if a fire destroys your house, there's a big chance that both the computer and the backup are gone.
Also, I'm thinking of buying a 2.5" 60GB USB HDD(they're very cheap, starting from 70?) to carry all my documents/source/images(/music) with me. I'd take weekly backups to another drive that I keep at home and I'd use the USB disk on any computer I use. To protect the data, I'd use TrueCrypt for in case it gets lost.
Pros:
- reading your docs from a separate drive doesn't slow down your main OS HDD
- use on any computer
- safe(password-protection)
- easy to backup
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#115037 - sgeos - Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:02 pm
That's an amazing solution. I'm not sure that it work with sensitive data because some companies would be fussy about you walking out the door with that data.
-Brendan
#115039 - Vich - Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:55 pm
| sgeos wrote: |
That's an amazing solution. I'm not sure that it work with sensitive data because some companies would be fussy about you walking out the door with that data.
-Brendan |
The company I work for doesn't mind that if you encrypt it. If someone would be really anal with security, TrueCrypt can even create hidden partitions in empty disk space. You only see that there's a hidden partition after entering the correct password :)
ps: TrueCrypt is open-source, has lots of encryption algorythms to choose from and can be ran from the portable drive without having to install anything, so you can make it auto-run when the disk gets attached to a PC by setting an autorun.ini file;
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Last edited by Vich on Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
#115043 - sgeos - Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:01 pm
| Vich wrote: |
| If someone would be really anal with security, TrueCrypt can even... |
The problem is that there are two kinds of "anal with security". The smart way (the data is safe), and the stupid way (if anything goes out the door, your job goes with it). TrueCrypt can not solve the second variety, and there are a lot of unreasonable people in the world.
-Brendan