I think I have a Drive Fetish

archfoto · Sep 7, 2023

Scannerman said:
I'm not opposed to external hard drives but most of what you see in those pictures isn't running off USB ports. In fact, drive letters X and Y were reserved for my toaster. I'm getting to that stage where I'm going to have to start mounting USB drives. I'm hoping when I'm done sorting I won't be needing half of these drives on this PC.

Only half?

My drives are all used as a matter of redundancy. I had two hard drives fail within two weeks of one another. Hence the need for 3 drives, with mostly the same info on each. Got tired of burning CDs and DVDs years ago - ran out of space to put them in, plus keeping track of them is a pain. So, when a drive fills up or fails, I buy the next largest drive, and put all the same data on it from the newest of my current old operating drives, with room to grow. I then use the Cathy utility to catalog what is on the retired drive, put it in a plastic bag, along with the cables, and converter, and label it, so if I need older data that isn't on any of my current drives, I just have to find the retired drive and hook it up (if it is still working) to an open USB 3.0 port. The Cathy catalog database utility gives me the entire file structures of all the disconnected working drives, so I can find the data I am looking for pretty easily without physically looking for it on all the drives. You can find Cathy at CNet, as well as other sites. My older version (v 2.28.3) of Cathy seems to work OK with Win 11 Pro. There is a newer version out there.

Scannerman · Sep 7, 2023

Speaking of redundancy, those pictures can appear misleading as some of those drives are actually arrays. The system is running RAID 0, RAID 1 (2X) and RAID 10 (2X). So that on it's own is 14 drives in total. Sounds to me like you found your answer to cold storage. I'll have a look at this Cathy but it sounds like something very similar to what I already have licensed. Yup. I figure about half. I have four females in my family who all like me to service their stuff and keep their data safe. I'm the closest thing to an IT they have and I'm doing the best I can.

archfoto · Sep 7, 2023

Scannerman said:
Speaking of redundancy, those pictures can appear misleading as some of those drives are actually arrays. The system is running RAID 0, RAID 1 (2X) and RAID 10 (2X). So that on it's own is 14 drives in total. Sounds to me like you found your answer to cold storage. I'll have a look at this Cathy but it sounds like something very similar to what I already have licensed. Yup. I figure about half. I have four females in my family who all like me to service their stuff and keep their data safe. I'm the closest thing to an IT they have and I'm doing the best I can.

Wow! You definitely have your reasons for the number of drives you have. No one can say what is the best drive system. Everyone's needs are unique.

I have found that even with my 3 USB 3.0 drives, two 8-TB, and a 6-TB, when restarting, they take time to catch up, and seem to load after Windows 11 does. On cold startup, they all seem to load quickly at the same time. I added a 7 connection USB 3.1 (4 type As), and USB 3.2 (3 type Cs) expansion card to my computer. It can't power a USB device or charge a phone, but works for file transfers. It also makes me ready for faster drives when I have to order new ones. It also frees up the ports already on my box. It is quite quick, but the USB regular hard drives are way slower than the 1TB SSD inside my box.

Do you find all these drives slow you down during a cold start, or a restart?

I hope Cathy can work for you.

I have a friend who is an amateur/pro photographer. I told him about Cathy some years ago. He can take 1000s of exposures in a day (he brackets to do HDR images. He had a client who came to him for a picture he took of her dead husband's boat years ago, and he had to go through all of his retired drives just to find that image, as he never bothered to look at Cathy. It took him quite a while, and turned up on the last drive he had. Being organized is definitely the key to being more productive.

Scannerman · Sep 7, 2023

archfoto said:
Wow! You definitely have your reasons for the number of drives you have. No one can say what is the best drive system. Everyone's needs are unique.

And ne'r was a truer word spake.

I'm considering making this my motto ↑

Indeed. Some folks seem to forget what the acronym, PC, stands for. Why wouldn't anyone want to tailor their PC to fit their needs? I have a gaming rig that doesn't use even 1/4 of the drives my work station uses. Admittedly, I'm probably being a little excessive but I'm hoping it's temporary and I also hope to be replacing some of the smaller drives with larger ones over time. I'll definitely look into Cathy and see what it offers that Win Catalog doesn't. These sorts of software are vital for when one has large amounts of data to store. Right now my system is an utter state of chaos and mayhem but I'm building a structure for sorting it all out over the winter, cleaning out the duplicates, and organizing it all over again. This mess is largely the result of the biggest catastrophic system failure I ever experienced in all my years as an end user and there's no getting around the fact that Windows Recovery tools helped me get to this stage. A word of advice:

When Windows says it will over write drive C and D don't believe it. When Windows says it will exclude drives that you selected to exclude DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT. Air gap those other drives before proceeding. My carelessness cost me immensely.

Flashorn · Sep 7, 2023

Suggestion:
Why not make use of File hosts?
I've been on FileFactory for about 11 years and have been well served. lots of room to play with.

antspants · Sep 7, 2023

Flashorn said:
Suggestion:
Why not make use of File hosts?
I've been on FileFactory for about 11 years and have been well served. lots of room to play with.

You’ve been lucky.
The problem with hosting services like FileFactory, Rapidgator etc is that you never know when authorities might close them down. They are renowned for hosting pirated material. Their process for reporting copyright infringement is for show only and as much as the process is real, they do little to stop the practice. Companies or services like these rely on the pirate factor, it would be the majority of their income.
At some point authorities are going to say NO. Think Megaupload, that was a huge case that I watched closely, I know it still operates but Kim Dotcom was lucky to a degree. My involvement was and to a certain degree still is, movie pirating infringement.

Flashorn · Sep 7, 2023

antspants said:
You’ve been lucky.
The problem with hosting services like FileFactory, Rapidgator etc is that you never know when authorities might close them down. They are renowned for hosting pirated material. Their process for reporting copyright infringement is for show only and as much as the process is real, they do little to stop the practice. Companies or services like these rely on the pirate factor, it would be the majority of their income.
At some point authorities are going to say NO. Think Megaupload, that was a huge case that I watched closely, I know it still operates but Kim Dotcom was lucky to a degree. My involvement was and to a certain degree still is, movie pirating infringement.

Don't think luck has anything to do with it. MegaUpload wasn't up for that long before it got taken down.
Filefactory has been there since before i joined. It probable has been used for pirating but, my goal is simply
storage and backups.

antspants · Sep 7, 2023

Flashorn said:
It probable has been used for pirating but, my goal is simply
storage and backups.

I wasn’t at all suggestion that you are a pirate. But yes, FileFactory is notorious, as are others, for hosting copyright infringed material. My view is, that if someone is going to pay a file service, why not just pay for a cloud service. Megaupload had been running since 2005.

Edit; I should add that it ran for at least 7 years until Dotcom started Mega. I know there are always work arounds but I wouldn’t trust my files on these services. Coders are forever creating apps to search these filehosts.

archfoto · Sep 7, 2023

Scannerman said:
And ne'r was a truer word spake.

View attachment 70315

I'm considering making this my motto ↑

Indeed. Some folks seem to forget what the acronym, PC, stands for. Why wouldn't anyone want to tailor their PC to fit their needs? I have a gaming rig that doesn't use even 1/4 of the drives my work station uses. Admittedly, I'm probably being a little excessive but I'm hoping it's temporary and I also hope to be replacing some of the smaller drives with larger ones over time. I'll definitely look into Cathy and see what it offers that Win Catalog doesn't. These sorts of software are vital for when one has large amounts of data to store. Right now my system is an utter state of chaos and mayhem but I'm building a structure for sorting it all out over the winter, cleaning out the duplicates, and organizing it all over again. This mess is largely the result of the biggest catastrophic system failure I ever experienced in all my years as an end user and there's no getting around the fact that Windows Recovery tools helped me get to this stage. A word of advice:

When Windows says it will over write drive C and D don't believe it. When Windows says it will exclude drives that you selected to exclude DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT. Air gap those other drives before proceeding. My carelessness cost me immensely.

Thanks for the tip, good advice. Good luck with taming your beast.
BTW, this is why I am leery of self-driving cars. I have owned lots of PCs since 1987, and people are still getting BSODs! One in a car could be horrendous.

Scannerman · Sep 8, 2023

archfoto said:
Thanks for the tip, good advice. Good luck with taming your beast.
BTW, this is why I am leery of self-driving cars. I have owned lots of PCs since 1987, and people are still getting BSODs! One in a car could be horrendous.

My old motto used to be, Stuff Happens. Yeah, I don't think I'll be getting into one of those units any time soon. Even GPS gives me the heebie-jeebies. I drive an old angry grandpa van and my idea of luxury is power windows and cruise control. Happy to stick with PCs and pay someone else to do the grunt work. My days of rolling around under a vehicle are done. Come to think of it... My power window on my driver's side is kaput. Yup. Stuff happens.

ShamrockRig · Sep 8, 2023

Flashorn said:
Don't think luck has anything to do with it. MegaUpload wasn't up for that long before it got taken down.
Filefactory has been there since before i joined. It probable has been used for pirating but, my goal is simply
storage and backups.

pretty sure mega has been running for years..i've been downloading mods off that site for the last 4 years atleast. The original site ran from 2004 to 2012. So 8 years isn't a long time? Must have been renamed mega, Same site really.

hdmi · Sep 9, 2023

Scannerman said:
Air gap those other drives before proceeding.

Styrofoam gap = better IMO, even with the rounded corners of Windows 11.

antspants · Sep 9, 2023

ShamrockRig said:
pretty sure mega has been running for years..i've been downloading mods off that site for the last 4 years atleast. The original site ran from 2004 to 2012. So 8 years isn't a long time? Must have been renamed mega, Same site really.

yep. He started it started the same year that his other site, Megaupload closed. All he did was use a different structure, China took him under their wing, they seen the potential Tax $$$

Scannerman · Sep 9, 2023

hdmi said:
Styrofoam gap = better IMO, even with the rounded corners of Windows 11.

Up here, we call that 'cold storage'. You keep 'em in a cool, dark, dry corner until you need 'em. Air gapping up this way refers to physically disconnected drives but still installed for easy reconnect.