The start of 2023 has been a data disaster... backup, backup, backup (Productivity 5)
I have not been productive. I have had many many terabytes of data nearly destroyed have narrowed dodged some catastrophic failures. Backup your data. This is a suggestion to you and a reminder to me about the importance of backups. Backup your data. I’ve been for the most part living on the edge with limited backups because I have too much data and too little storage. Backup your data. I am coming up solutions. Having a full backup that is accessible is important for a number of reasons. Ideally you’d want an easily accessible backup that can be used as a drop-in replacement as a stopgap measure if necessary. Long story short, 60+ terabytes is going to take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month to transfer.
The first solution that comes to mind is compression of video files and consequently is a migration away from Plex to Jellyfin. Both are media library streaming services that are fantastic. The motivating factor is that Jellyfin can stream AV1 over browser while Plex is stuck on H.264. (Neither can stream H.265 due to licensing.) AV1 is an incredible codec that is efficient enough to reduce file sizes on average by around 25-50% while maintaining quality. There are times when I can’t even tell that there’s been compression especially for CG.
As I’m rethinking my setup and putting out fires I haven’t been writing much. I’ve been distracted. Here is what has happened so far:
I corrupted my Obsidian vault. How is this even possible? Hubris… and plugins…
I almost lost terabytes of data off my desktop because of Bitlocker. I was saved by sheer dumb luck.
My Synology volume with many terabytes crashed… and then uncrashed? I thought that Synology was the king of consumer NAS’s that would both be performant, stable, and stylish. I thought they were the Apple of NAS’s. Boy was I wrong. In my opinion, if you want a NAS that you only use as a data storage and nothing else then I think Synology is great except it’s then extremely overpriced. If you want to actually do stuff and run services off Synology then from experience it’s a terrible option because you’re paying top dollar for a nice veneer that is frustrating to use both in terms of speed and reliability.
A new hard drive I bought recently just died.
My workflow has been disrupted. I am rethinking my setup. On my desktop PC I have used both Drivepool and Drivebender to pool together my harddrives so they show up as one big drive. I just switched from Drivepool to Drivebender again, but Drivebender has it’s own glaring issues that make it equally as bad as Drivepool. It’s just a different kind of bad. Drivepool is obnoxious with it’s scanning prioritizing itself and slows your computer down to a crawl. Drivebender’s pooled drive fools you into thinking everything is in one folder, but doesn’t fool your computer making you unable to launch most applications from a Drivebender pool.
The start of 2023 has been a good lesson and has given me an opportunity to reflect on my digital life with ripples that will be felt for some time