Thanks a lot, though this really wasn't that big of a deal for me. It was a "I wonder if I could do that" thing for about 5 minutes. I have a really old version of Lightwave and newer versions cost more than I'd care to spend on software, so I don't think I'll be buying any licenses anytime soon. Also, I'm on Blender 4.2, so there's a possibility those wouldn't work anyway, as they seem to be for much older versions of Blender. Furthermore, I'm dorking around in Linux again, and Blender works with it but Lightwave doesn't.
I think that I have that ship somewhere in my dvd backups... It was released by " Foomandoonian" long time ago, at F3D. It´s a lightwave mesh, if my memory serves.
EDIT: Looks like I lost both meshes (together with many others from F3D), cause that dvd backup is corrupted
It's the worst! Especially because DVDs are os out of sight/out of mind now. You're thinking more of your external HDs, you expect the discs to just take care of themselves. Like books on your shelves. But it just ain't the case.
Yeah, I stopped keeping backups on writable CDs and DVDs years ago because they just don't last. It's a shame, especially since I've got movies that are 25+ years old that still play fine, but the discs they use are different than the writable ones you can buy.
Weird story. I used to be the Asset Protection (AKA, Loss Prevention) Team Lead at the Walmart that I work at. AP has to write camera footage for evidence to writable DVDs, and they make more than one copy, I think it's two or three. I've heard of people having their cases dismissed because the discs weren't playable in court.
burnable media uses a dye you thin with the laser, the quality of that dye the glue holding the reflective foil and the carrier (the disc) all matters. Bought dvds and cds are mastered or stamped physically into the media and should last hundreds of years (sadly plastics do age from uv and other environmental issues so your can get disc rot)
So when you burn data you need to have quality media and do it slowly so the laser has the dwell time to make a good burn. Burned discs will always have errors no matter what you do it just relays on the error correction built into the book type of the disc. Even real physical media is this way too.
The dyes in disc all suffered a similar issue as caps from the early 2000s Stolen formulas, not well tested formulas and, well outright greed of cost cutting with no care about viability. In my experience it was hit or miss I had some of the costly japan dye discs go while some cheap junk from FRYS still work 30yrs later even if they have turned various shades of blue green silver and gold. ATM I have more issues finding a working optical drive to read with!
real joke is if you go hdds you have magnetic drift, ssds loose charge states and both need to be rewritten every few yrs to realign and avoid corruption. Worse is most hdds these days all leave the factory with defects. My avg is like 1 out of 5 has a defect bad enough that once you write enough to hit that defect it kills the entire drive. Horrible when your working with 12TB+ drives. . to do a proper write and read cycle on all cels on a large hdd can take 8 days. Most hdds I have gotten in the last 15yrs all have bad cels out of the box that need remapping. Then I have 5gig drives from 1996 that still work and have none.
KIM keyfobs are generally the WORST media to use as they, these days are mostly failed cells from SSD manufacturing.
ATM I use spinning rust and keep a few copies of stuff and do a yearly check and recopy to at least one of the back ups. I do this after a 9gig scsi drive took out a lot of saved artwork back in the early 2000s All I have of that stuff are some low rez jpgs of just a few pieces.
Not at all. I was actually hoping you were going to comment, because I could remember a conversation we had years ago about why cheap burnable media wasn't as good, but I couldn't remember the specifics. Plus, you just now taught me some stuff I didn't know about HDDs and SSDs.
No, knowledge always can be used in some way. Thanks for your explanation.
Yeah... these medias has a high failure rate, for several reasons. Being them the ones you pointed, or simply cause you did bad storage or bad use.
I think the best we can have nowadays, are online backups. It´s cause the companies have much more resources than you, and have a lot of layers to secure the data. Of course, it costs you some money, which increases depending your needs. I have some things online in free servers, what is risk too.
I also begun to put my backups from dvds back to hd, thinking about to save things while they still are there and dust off what is outdated. It´s tedious and a time consuming... I also bought some new dvd´s that suposelly have a long life, and bought a writable device compatible with them, cause I plan to remake my backups.
In the meantime... I contacted " Foomandoonian", which is no longer an active member in the 3d forums. He will see if he still has that old mesh in backup.
I leaned a LOT of new things. Thanks MKF. It just so happens that I never used writable DVD's much and have some around that have never been used. I guess they're just good for throwing out. I guess you're saying that USB drives aren't reliable either? Isn't that just a helluva thing.
Eh no reason to throw em out IF you have a working burner. DVDrs tend to me more robust than a cdr but I def would not trust them for single back up saves or storage.
USB keys have been in a race to the bottom for a number of years now and they still do not disclose what chips are used etc. I have had about as much luck as with dvdrs. I know more people who have had them fail than I have had drives go, (where the thumb drive just outright fails.) I have had a number of corrupt files over the years but I find the speeds the things to be more of an annoyance.
One point of issue with thumb drives is most people do not properly dismount them (eject the drive) this creates index errors and the os often makes it seem like the data is lost and needs a format. Ignore the msg and see if the drive mounts or try a different pc. This added annoyance in win10 it is a right pita and is a bit buggy sometimes. The unmount UI hangs so if your doing more than one drive your talking a 5min chore sometimes.
ATM I use spinning rust in a caddy or external box and then power down. I will randomly take em out and make a copy of the data. Say once every 2 to 3 yrs. Some will make multiples and then store copies off site so if something happens to that location there isnt a full loss. I also do not use cloud storage for any personal or sensitive data or data I do not care if it is freely distroed. (nothing online is secure)
When I get the time I will try to find some of the yt vids about drift and cel state loss. Some of the stuff I read SSDs loose state faster than drift in a HDD. I have not really used a ssd for long term storage just a faster method to back up a system before wiping or to store LARGE data on the go where I dont want a heavy HHD. ( I mean that is what thumbdrives are for lol if they werent so slow)
oof, typos and dreaded thinking 3 things while typing leading to wtf sentences. (hope IO got it all lol)
And this is just MANAGING the storage. We haven't even gotten into ORGANIZING your files so that they're easy to use, I could go on for hours about that.
For starters, I totally agree about cloud storage. Store your stuff in the cloud and then next thing you know it has been hacked. You are also dead on correct about the buggy eject function in Windows 10. I always eject before taking out a drive.
I've NEVER trusted the Cloud since before the Cloud existed! Plus all that bandwidth to upload and download, no thanks! I'm also worried about accidentally deleting the backup, or things syncing weird.
hah yeah I'm not uploading 450tb of data. I used to use it as so many jobs used it to transfer work but having google lock up a email just cause I was using a old ESR client and loosing access to services connected to that email forever is full bullshit. That and only support you get is a community forum and they hen peck who DOES or does not get help. Not a way to run a service like that this includes anything google from gmail to youtube.
Organization, Im bad. I usually sort by what it is but things like all my dvd brd rips for the file server and music are just a nightmare. Those are more important now as my dvd player and brd for the tv have quit working. Probably melted belts, old house really ate belts and yellowed plastics. Suspect that place had a super high radon exposure. Stuff not even 5yrs old have gone goopy or yellowed horribly.
I had a friend who collected anime fansubs, music and dojinshi games and he had this huge coded database where he could boolean search a word or name and it would tell him exactly where to go to find that file. . . . . . . I am just way WAY too lazy to go that far. The files have to be happy they get backed up and checked on once in a while
I only use the cloud for things I plan to share. IE: the two models I released recently. I created a free Dropbox account (they still give you 3GB for free) and put the files there. I created download links and posted them here, so if someone were to hack it and take my stuff, it's not like it's anything I haven't made freely available to anyone who clicks the link anyway. For anything private, I'm not trying to put it in the cloud because I don't trust the cloud. Not only do I worry about data breaches, but I don't really trust the companies who create the cloud servers. That goes for any major tech companies, especially the "big three," Apple, Google and Microsoft. (I don't trust one more than the other, I put them in alphabetical order)
For local storage, I have a flash drive, but MKF is making me rethink that. I do have some old HDDs. Being a gamer, I used to have my games on those, but the write speeds are so terrible that load times and even download speeds are affected by the speed of the drive. I didn't realize this was the case until Starfield took a lot longer to load on my computer than it had on the XBOX Series S. As an experiment, I tried it from a SSD and found that it not only loads a lot quicker, but the download speeds get a boost. I guess it's a matter of write speeds. I find NVME to be the best as far a write speeds, but at the same time, it's the most expensive. Also, it can be a pain to switch the drive from one computer to another to share files, more so than with a 2.5" drive. However, just using them to back up files, I need to convert an old HDD into a backup drive. I should do what MKF does and get one of those caddies. I'll have to add that to the shopping list for my next paycheck. I'm sure NewEgg won't mind me spending some more money on their site, though I've spent quite a bit on there recently.
Anywho, I love how the side discussion is keeping this thread alive, but it's also a reminder that I really need to do some fracking CGI. I've got a 3-day weekend because I'm on a rotating schedule at work and my days off vary, so I get those every 4 weeks. I really need to spend some of that time in Blender.
I had a friend who collected anime fansubs, music and dojinshi games and he had this huge coded database where he could boolean search a word or name and it would tell him exactly where to go to find that file. . . . . . . I am just way WAY too lazy to go that far. The files have to be happy they get backed up and checked on once in a while
kkkk! I´m good at organization so, I have a defined structure for my backups but, sometimes, I feel the missing of a good index, or a better tool that would help me to do that (manage and search faster). I also have 3DBrowser installed, and I have thumbnails of all meshes in their folders so, I can "see" what I´m browsing in a easy way. About music, I´m still recording mp3 in dvds, and creating youtube playlists, and I´m satisfied for while.
Anyway, I keep thinking (all the time) that I would do that (those) things better, and it leads me to always change how I do things. It is a problem sometimes, like to finish a mesh... I´m always unsatisfied with my meshes, so, I have a huge backlog, which increase my backup needs.
This discussion made me do a total backup. I owe you all. My backups are usually incremental (Backing up something I just changed) but sometimes you forget or lose track of what you are doing.
Posts
Thanks a lot, though this really wasn't that big of a deal for me. It was a "I wonder if I could do that" thing for about 5 minutes. I have a really old version of Lightwave and newer versions cost more than I'd care to spend on software, so I don't think I'll be buying any licenses anytime soon. Also, I'm on Blender 4.2, so there's a possibility those wouldn't work anyway, as they seem to be for much older versions of Blender. Furthermore, I'm dorking around in Linux again, and Blender works with it but Lightwave doesn't.
I think that I have that ship somewhere in my dvd backups... It was released by " Foomandoonian" long time ago, at F3D. It´s a lightwave mesh, if my memory serves.
EDIT: Looks like I lost both meshes (together with many others from F3D), cause that dvd backup is corrupted
Weird story. I used to be the Asset Protection (AKA, Loss Prevention) Team Lead at the Walmart that I work at. AP has to write camera footage for evidence to writable DVDs, and they make more than one copy, I think it's two or three. I've heard of people having their cases dismissed because the discs weren't playable in court.
So when you burn data you need to have quality media and do it slowly so the laser has the dwell time to make a good burn. Burned discs will always have errors no matter what you do it just relays on the error correction built into the book type of the disc. Even real physical media is this way too.
The dyes in disc all suffered a similar issue as caps from the early 2000s Stolen formulas, not well tested formulas and, well outright greed of cost cutting with no care about viability. In my experience it was hit or miss I had some of the costly japan dye discs go while some cheap junk from FRYS still work 30yrs later even if they have turned various shades of blue green silver and gold. ATM I have more issues finding a working optical drive to read with!
real joke is if you go hdds you have magnetic drift, ssds loose charge states and both need to be rewritten every few yrs to realign and avoid corruption. Worse is most hdds these days all leave the factory with defects. My avg is like 1 out of 5 has a defect bad enough that once you write enough to hit that defect it kills the entire drive. Horrible when your working with 12TB+ drives. . to do a proper write and read cycle on all cels on a large hdd can take 8 days. Most hdds I have gotten in the last 15yrs all have bad cels out of the box that need remapping. Then I have 5gig drives from 1996 that still work and have none.
KIM keyfobs are generally the WORST media to use as they, these days are mostly failed cells from SSD manufacturing.
ATM I use spinning rust and keep a few copies of stuff and do a yearly check and recopy to at least one of the back ups. I do this after a 9gig scsi drive took out a lot of saved artwork back in the early 2000s All I have of that stuff are some low rez jpgs of just a few pieces.
ANYHOOO a wall of pointless useless knowledge
Not at all. I was actually hoping you were going to comment, because I could remember a conversation we had years ago about why cheap burnable media wasn't as good, but I couldn't remember the specifics. Plus, you just now taught me some stuff I didn't know about HDDs and SSDs.
No, knowledge always can be used in some way. Thanks for your explanation.
Yeah... these medias has a high failure rate, for several reasons. Being them the ones you pointed, or simply cause you did bad storage or bad use.
I think the best we can have nowadays, are online backups. It´s cause the companies have much more resources than you, and have a lot of layers to secure the data. Of course, it costs you some money, which increases depending your needs. I have some things online in free servers, what is risk too.
I also begun to put my backups from dvds back to hd, thinking about to save things while they still are there and dust off what is outdated. It´s tedious and a time consuming... I also bought some new dvd´s that suposelly have a long life, and bought a writable device compatible with them, cause I plan to remake my backups.
In the meantime... I contacted " Foomandoonian", which is no longer an active member in the 3d forums. He will see if he still has that old mesh in backup.
USB keys have been in a race to the bottom for a number of years now and they still do not disclose what chips are used etc. I have had about as much luck as with dvdrs. I know more people who have had them fail than I have had drives go, (where the thumb drive just outright fails.) I have had a number of corrupt files over the years but I find the speeds the things to be more of an annoyance.
One point of issue with thumb drives is most people do not properly dismount them (eject the drive) this creates index errors and the os often makes it seem like the data is lost and needs a format. Ignore the msg and see if the drive mounts or try a different pc. This added annoyance in win10 it is a right pita and is a bit buggy sometimes. The unmount UI hangs so if your doing more than one drive your talking a 5min chore sometimes.
ATM I use spinning rust in a caddy or external box and then power down. I will randomly take em out and make a copy of the data. Say once every 2 to 3 yrs. Some will make multiples and then store copies off site so if something happens to that location there isnt a full loss. I also do not use cloud storage for any personal or sensitive data or data I do not care if it is freely distroed. (nothing online is secure)
When I get the time I will try to find some of the yt vids about drift and cel state loss. Some of the stuff I read SSDs loose state faster than drift in a HDD. I have not really used a ssd for long term storage just a faster method to back up a system before wiping or to store LARGE data on the go where I dont want a heavy HHD. ( I mean that is what thumbdrives are for lol if they werent so slow)
oof, typos and dreaded thinking 3 things while typing leading to wtf sentences. (hope IO got it all lol)
Organization, Im bad. I usually sort by what it is but things like all my dvd brd rips for the file server and music are just a nightmare. Those are more important now as my dvd player and brd for the tv have quit working. Probably melted belts, old house really ate belts and yellowed plastics. Suspect that place had a super high radon exposure. Stuff not even 5yrs old have gone goopy or yellowed horribly.
I had a friend who collected anime fansubs, music and dojinshi games and he had this huge coded database where he could boolean search a word or name and it would tell him exactly where to go to find that file. . . . . . . I am just way WAY too lazy to go that far. The files have to be happy they get backed up and checked on once in a while
For local storage, I have a flash drive, but MKF is making me rethink that. I do have some old HDDs. Being a gamer, I used to have my games on those, but the write speeds are so terrible that load times and even download speeds are affected by the speed of the drive. I didn't realize this was the case until Starfield took a lot longer to load on my computer than it had on the XBOX Series S. As an experiment, I tried it from a SSD and found that it not only loads a lot quicker, but the download speeds get a boost. I guess it's a matter of write speeds. I find NVME to be the best as far a write speeds, but at the same time, it's the most expensive. Also, it can be a pain to switch the drive from one computer to another to share files, more so than with a 2.5" drive. However, just using them to back up files, I need to convert an old HDD into a backup drive. I should do what MKF does and get one of those caddies. I'll have to add that to the shopping list for my next paycheck. I'm sure NewEgg won't mind me spending some more money on their site, though I've spent quite a bit on there recently.
Anywho, I love how the side discussion is keeping this thread alive, but it's also a reminder that I really need to do some fracking CGI. I've got a 3-day weekend because I'm on a rotating schedule at work and my days off vary, so I get those every 4 weeks. I really need to spend some of that time in Blender.
kkkk! I´m good at organization so, I have a defined structure for my backups but, sometimes, I feel the missing of a good index, or a better tool that would help me to do that (manage and search faster). I also have 3DBrowser installed, and I have thumbnails of all meshes in their folders so, I can "see" what I´m browsing in a easy way. About music, I´m still recording mp3 in dvds, and creating youtube playlists, and I´m satisfied for while.
Anyway, I keep thinking (all the time) that I would do that (those) things better, and it leads me to always change how I do things. It is a problem sometimes, like to finish a mesh... I´m always unsatisfied with my meshes, so, I have a huge backlog, which increase my backup needs.