[SwitcherX]

I setup my computer to go through the porn collection and anything that hasn't been accessed for a year gets backed up to my gateway/firewall/email/dns/dhcp/ldap/nfs/ldap/nis/ntp/wireless/voip/everything else server.  Earlier the hard drive died taking around 95%+ of my porn with it into oblivion.  It's not the porn I lost that's upsetting, it's all of the time I went thru the files sorting everything.  A friend says he might be able to get it back.  He's done data recovery miracles before so there's a little hope.

For a replacement I think I'm going to get a 128GB USB3 flash drive for the new archive and a 64GB microSDXC card for some other situations.  I'll truecrypt the ever loving shit out of both of them.

What do you guys think?   Opinions/thoughts/recommendations?

[bignatslover]

ACK - total sympathy for ya man.

I paid a tech store $160 to restore my crashed hard drive - they actually were able to restore about 90% of it.  But of course I had to buy them a new hard drive to transfer stuff to, on top of the fee to restore.

Any replacement drive you buy today is going to be fine as a choice.

Good luck, and I really do empathize here.

[tdotter]

Hope your buddy can get those files back.
Anything I can't stand to lose,I always have them saved in 2 or 3 different places.
For instance,a few years ago,I copied all my VHS porn movies onto DVDs and made sure I copied each one onto 2 different DVDs just in case.

[Palomine]

My sincere sympathies Switch... I understand how you must feel: it's not the porn but the effort spent collecting and sorting.

A couple of thoughts/suggestions:

Unless you've already have your OS boot off of an SSD, money spent on that 128G SSD would probably be more beneficial if the SSD were your system drive. I understand your interest in SSD is probably based more on a desire for data security than for speed (obviously, there's little need for an archive drive containing only infrequently-used files to be super-fast)... I'm not sure I've read anything that convincing yet that says SSDs are more reliable than hard drives (or any easier to do data recovery on if they fail).

Then there's also the fact that 128G is pretty small... a decent size for an SSD of course, but tiny (and expensive) as hard drives go... for what that costs you can get a 2+TB drive OR a pair of 1TB drives (with $ left over). Of course, if your archive/everything else you want to backup will fit on a 128G drive, then there's no need for anything bigger (a dedicated collector of just Hitomi Tanaka stuff could fill up a 128G drive toot sweet! ).

Why (may I ask) do you bother to encrypt the data? If your computer is not private (yours alone to use) then of course I understand... but (IMO) password protecting access to the computer is enough (no one else but me has physical access to mine unless I offer) and I don't personally feel the need for an additional layer of security (encrypting the files). I'm just curious (feel free to PM instead of reply here if you like). I've often wondered about the downsides of routine data encryption, especially for large collections of relatively small files... whether doing so could make data recovery more problematic, etc...

Here's what I do: my archive (porn, music, personal files, etc...) is spread across two internal drives so once in a while I simply make a full backup of each internal drive to a corresponding external backup drive. I don't even bother with incremental backups or backup software, etc... I just click and drag everything over (in chunks of a few hundred gig at a time and verify that the copy was complete each chunk). Thus, I've always got a full exact copy of the entire archive/drives (well, as complete as the date of the most recent backup) and the odds of two separate hard drives BOTH dying at the same time are extremely remote (I don't leave the backup drives connected... they stay elsewhere when not in use so on the off chance the PC is stolen/destroyed I'll still probably have the data backups in their 'undisclosed location' ).

Regardless of what you decide, if your pal can't recover everything (again, my extreme sympathies) drop me a PM and I'll see if I can replace any particular favorites you might miss.

[tipwowbagger]

Depending on how nerdy and or paranoid you are, you could consider backblaze

It is 5 per month for unlimited storage.

I haven't had any dealings with them, but they seem great.

http://www.backblaze.com/

If they ever support Linux, I will jump on that post haste.

[TheZookie007]

With respect to your hard disk: unless your buddy runs a clean room data recovery unit, be very very careful. The first rule of data recovery is the same as the first line of the Hippocratic Oath: "first, do no harm." A data recovery should be done on a clone of the drive, not the drive itself.

The very same day I read on another mailing list about someone's hard disk going south, I came home, turned on my laptop and the screen display started going all kooky, with the hard disk light going on and staying on. I removed the battery after 5 minutes since pressing the power button had no effect. When I put the battery back and tried turning it, it began to continuously cycle on, stay on for two seconds, and go off. Fortunately I had an extra laptop to work with, so I got an external HDD enclosure, popped the bad HDD into it, downloaded this onto my good laptop, and let it rip. It made a bit-by-bit copy of the bad drive into a file on my good laptop. So now I can run this to try and correct the bad drive...if that doesn't work, hey, at least I got all my data saved, so I can get another HDD and dump it back onto it.

Good luck, man. I've been there.

[SwitcherX]

With respect to your hard disk: unless your buddy runs a clean room data recovery unit, be very very careful.

Actually, he sort of does have a clean room.  He hasn't tried to save anything yet.

One thing I forgot to mention is that all of my "must have" porn is safe.  The video with the girl that looks(both face and body) exactly like my cousins ex-wife and which he uses to torment her, Linda Lovelace's 8mm loop Dog Fucker (for historical purposes), and about 50GB of other stuff, I burn on to DVD.

If I get a 128GB flash drive I'll have lots of room for future collecting and I'd prefer one over a harddrive for portability and privacy.  Sometimes someone will be over and it'll go like:

her: "Let me check my email really fast."
me: "Hurry up."
her: "How come this drive won't open?"
me: "Christ, here we go..."
her: "What are you hiding??!"
me: "All the stuff I don't want you to see."
her: "YOU DON'T LOVE ME!!!"
me: "What do you think?"

I'm tired of situations like that so a truecrypted flash drive makes obvious sense.  Just unplug it and put it somewhere where they won't see it.  Also I don't plan on saving everything like I used to so 128GB will last until I have to upgrade to a 512GB flash drive probably.  The micro SDXC drive will be for moving files and doing other stuff noone needs to know about.

[Palomine]

You do know that you don't have to automatically mount an available drive, right? So, a drive that is physically installed can be accessed and mounted by you, and it will be invisible to a guest user/login unless they start a hardware inventory of your system. For that matter, your 'guest' account ought to be separate from yours anyway, so anyone checking their email doesn't have your bookmarks, browser history, etc... (let alone Linda's dalliances into canine erotica ...btw the copy I ran across this morning may actually hold the all-time record for 'worst VHS transfer ever! ).

Besides, isn't 'guests wanting to check their email' a good reason to keep a $50. 'junk' laptop lying around?

[TheZookie007]

I have an Android tablet for guests to use to check their email with. No one touches my laptops/desktops but me

[prinz]

I have an Android tablet for guests to use to check their email with. No one touches my laptops/desktops but me

Yes sir IM right there with ya on that one!

[SwitcherX]

My friend did some voodoo to the hard drive and managed to get some files back.  Maybe 10% overall, but I'm surprised he got anything back from the other side.

I sent an email to the people that make SpinRite asking if it can recover files as the website for it is confusing about that.  They said it doesn't but they gave me these links of file recovery software:

"Active@ File Recovery" made by LSoft Technologies

"TestDisk", made by CG Security

"GetDataBack", made by Runtime Software LLC

"EasyRecovery", made by Ontrack Data International

"R-Studio", made by R-Tools Technology

"Recuva", made by Piriform Limited

"Stellar Phoenix", made by Stellar Information Systems

"Do It Yourself DataRecovery" web site


That was very nice of them.  However data recovery isn't my most pressing computer problem...

Tuesday night my family and relatives decided that they were going to come over and have an election party at my place.  Without telling me.  My parents are banned from ever coming over and I don't like most of my relatives so this was going to be unpleasant on many levels.  

First I had to hide everything that didn't need to be seen.  That wasn't a problem as everything I own fits in a car.  Luckily all of the stuff that needed to be hidden was in my bedroom and I threw it on the top self of the closet.  The girl I met while swimming and who was now lying down on the bed posed a problem however.  She got presentable and we walked out.

me: “This is...”
her: “Tracy”
me: “She's leaving.”

I made sure noone asked her any questions on the way out.  What followed was my mom, aunts, and other female relatives asking me shit like:

“Why doesn't your bed have a dust ruffle?”
“How come you don't have little end tables with little end lamps?”
“Do you just leave you clothes in the laundry basket or do you fold them?”
“How come you haven't decorated?”

This went on and on until I wanted to punch every one of them in the goddamn face.  My dad interrupted them to tell me that I didn't have anything to eat and that because of it he was disappointed with me and the way I live my life.  I responded with a vague reference to the shotgun in my closet.  Pizzas were ordered, cousins were dispatched for drinks, and I sat down on the couch to have an embolism.  

While waiting for the pizzas, people I was embarrassed to share DNA with introduced me to the people they brought with them.  Most of them were lawyers and boring as shit.  Another was a “Human Resources Executive”.  God help you if you asked her, “So you work in HR?”.  I turned to hear the people on MSNBC predict who was going to maintain the status quo for the next 4 years when my cousin said “This is [him].  He's an auditor with the IRS.”  He cheerfully followed up immediately with “Can I use your computer to check my email?”

Fuck...

I tried to say no but when I opened my mouth no sound came out.  At what seemed to be the speed of light he sat down in front of it.  “You shouldn't copy tv shows off of the internet.”  I had recently cleaned off the desktop so I thought it was ok(see attached screenshot).  Damn.  Then I realized he might start looking around and seeing all of the stuff that noone needs to never, never, ever see.  I started panicking that he might start Opera but he started Safari instead.  After he was done I almost felt like not killing everyone but then he said “How come you have Tor?  And is this a VPN app?”

“I've been doing... like... computer.  Security at work...  Lately...”.  

“Criminals use Tor.”

[the sounds people make when all the synapses in their brain misfire at random]

When he finally got up I deleted the Opera icon from the dock and unmounted the USB HD.  I was thinking “crisis averted” but then people wanted to use Twitter so they could tweet messages like “I can't believe it!  Four more years!!!  Hope And Change!!!!!!!  #OMG_PONIES!!!!!!111!!!1!!1!!!”.  I hyperventilated until around midnight.

Since then I've been thinking bout how to lock the computer down and have decided to follow the recommendations in Doctor Who's Security and Encryption Faq and similiar faqs.   Doctor Who is supposed to be an alter ego of Yardbird so its been tested under real world conditions.

I'm probably being paranoid.  



*edited to add*  I'll be buying a $50 laptop off of Craigslist in the near future.  

[gonZo]

I have two user accounts on my Mac. One for straight-arrow email/browsing/tweeting/shopping/banking/bills, and another for BEA activities/porn-browsing. The password for the "normal" account is a 6-letter word, but the password for the porn account is 15 characters with numbers and symbols. Preferences for the porn account turn on the screen saver and password-lock it after 1 minute of inactivity, and if I drag the mouse to the bottom-right-corner of the screen, that immediately triggers the screen saver and password lock. The drive and its backup are FileVault-encrypted.

(About 10 years ago, my mother and stepfather came for an unexpected visit, and insisted on a tour of the house. There was a lot of annoying talk about me not having decorated well, etc., so I can sympathize. After they left, I realized that when I led them through the computer room on the tour, the computer was displaying a full-screen picture of Kayla Kleevage with clothespins on her nipples.)

[TheZookie007]

I turned to hear the people on MSNBC predict who was going to maintain the status quo for the next 4 years when my cousin said “This is [him].  He's an auditor with the IRS.”  He cheerfully followed up immediately with “Can I use your computer to check my email?”

Fuck...

I tried to say no but when I opened my mouth no sound came out.  At what seemed to be the speed of light he sat down in front of it.  “You shouldn't copy tv shows off of the internet.”  I had recently cleaned off the desktop so I thought it was ok(see attached screenshot).  Damn.  Then I realized he might start looking around and seeing all of the stuff that noone needs to never, never, ever see.  I started panicking that he might start Opera but he started Safari instead.  After he was done I almost felt like not killing everyone but then he said “How come you have Tor?  And is this a VPN app?”

“I've been doing... like... computer.  Security at work...  Lately...”.  

“Criminals use Tor.”

You are a much better man than I am. For me, the convo would have gone like this:

"Can I use your computer to check my email?" (starts sitting down in front of my PC)
"No, you may not." (issues crushing backhanded slap to the interloper)

"Criminals use Tor..."
"They also use the public transportation system. What does that prove? Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on. Now get THE FUCK out of my house, you in-bred ingrate." (physically throws him out of the house like Uncle Phil did to Jazz in every episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)

Imagine the cheek!


PS: I've used GetDataBack and can recommend it.

[TheZookie007]

I have two user accounts on my Mac. One for straight-arrow email/browsing/tweeting/shopping/banking/bills, and another for BEA activities/porn-browsing. The password for the "normal" account is a 6-letter word, but the password for the porn account is 15 characters with numbers and symbols. Preferences for the porn account turn on the screen saver and password-lock it after 1 minute of inactivity, and if I drag the mouse to the bottom-right-corner of the screen, that immediately triggers the screen saver and password lock. The drive and its backup are FileVault-encrypted.

Since I am still new to the ways of Mac, I have not used my MBP to visit the BEA or any other similar site.

(About 10 years ago, my mother and stepfather came for an unexpected visit, and insisted on a tour of the house. There was a lot of annoying talk about me not having decorated well, etc., so I can sympathize. After they left, I realized that when I led them through the computer room on the tour, the computer was displaying a full-screen picture of Kayla Kleevage with clothespins on her nipples.)

HA!

[SwitcherX]

I have two user accounts on my Mac. One for straight-arrow email/browsing/tweeting/shopping/banking/bills, and another for BEA activities/porn-browsing. The password for the "normal" account is a 6-letter word, but the password for the porn account is 15 characters with numbers and symbols. Preferences for the porn account turn on the screen saver and password-lock it after 1 minute of inactivity, and if I drag the mouse to the bottom-right-corner of the screen, that immediately triggers the screen saver and password lock. The drive and its backup are FileVault-encrypted.

Making a "guest" account is a good idea.  There's still the possibility that people cn snoop around though.