He now can write the book on how to not get a Master's in History. But maybe he can use that as his thesis.

I really feel for the guy, but how on Earth could you protect something so personally valuable on a single drive? I mean, even non-graduate students and teabaggers understand that hard drives fail or are stolen.

It sucks that you might have to drop out of school, bro. But you know what? It doesn't sound like you had the common sense to survive in the real world, anyway.

Bio-nic: I keep a copy on my hard drive, on my SAN, on my encrypted ironkey in my safe, in my 2tb storage drive at a lock box at the bank, and in my offsite SAN array...

You should really look into

Durendal: Automated backup drive + online cloud storage for the more vital (and not too big) bits. This guy did it wrong. Why in the hell would you not back up your most important data?? Hell, just zip it and email it to yourself every week if you have to, or get an old 512MB thumbdrive and stick it there.

Like many of you, I just use the fully automated Dropbox for extremely vital documents. In terms of text and moderate amounts of photos (presumably, most of this guy's files), it's a no-brainer solution. Just updated your "thesis" folder? shiat's done.

Obviously I use hardware backups for larger files, mainly because cloud storage of 700GB of media would require a massive waiting period of many days and usually weeks.

Also, I used to consider off-site backups (not cloud, but a drive in another state, etc) as overkill. Then I experienced hurricane Katrina. It's definitely a bit paranoid but hell, things burn down, get burglarized, or drown all of the time.

"Years of research"? How long has this guy been doing his master's?

Typical. Dog ate my homework! Please give me another chance!?!

Shennannigans.

The guy wasn't riped off. He never wrote shiat. Angeling for loan forgiveness or some shiat.

As I just fried a hd, I ain't getting a kick yadda yadda yadda

/yeah, backup on my portable.
//this guy deserves to fail for ~bu

Ouch. Admittedly he should have been more careful with something so important, but I really felt bad for this guy

So now the poor guy has to face a lifetime of flipping burgers at McDonalds, instead of a lifetime of maitre d'ing at Olive Garden.

Back your work up people!

FTA "he just wants his computer and hopes the thief does the right thing."

Yeah, cause someone who would steal a laptop. money, and clothes from someone's trunk is the kind of people going around doing good deeds.

/Dropbox is free, dude

Durendal: Automated backup drive + online cloud storage for the more vital (and not too big) bits. This guy did it wrong. Why in the hell would you not back up your most important data?? Hell, just zip it and email it to yourself every week if you have to, or get an old 512MB thumbdrive and stick it there.

you could just email the docs to yourself at google or yahoo for pete's sake.

abb3w

BackAssward: There are two kinds of people: Those who have lost data, and those who are going to.

This.

I was lucky enough to have lost all my data when I didn't really have anything worth saving.

/main thing lost was intermediate versions of my winning IOCCC entry

FTA: Boldt doesn't care if he gets any of that back, he just wants his computer and hopes the thief does the right thing.

maybe that is cloud storage. such a fancy word, could mean anything.

Wingdings: FTA: Boldt doesn't care if he gets any of that back, he just wants his computer and hopes the thief does the right thing.

/Insert unlikely tag here

Schlock: Ouch. Admittedly he should have been more careful with something so important, but I really felt bad for this guy

Than maybe you should work for him in the future?

This happened at a school where I used to work. She was given an extra few months to start over and do it again.

I have no idea if she got through it.

This is an age old story:

http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2007/10/18/stolen_laptop/index.html?s o urce=newsletter

http://www.3news.co.nz/PhD-student-has-entire-project-stolen/tabid/423/articleI D /155636/Default.aspx

http://www.philmug.ph/forum/showthread.php?p=813187

I am of the opinion that if in 2010 losing your laptop means you have lost your thesis and all of your data the school should either:

A) immediately kick you out because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B) immediately grant you tenure because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat

RoyBatty: This is an age old story:

http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2007/10/18/stolen_laptop/index.html?s o urce=newsletter

http://www.3news.co.nz/PhD-student-has-entire-project-stolen/tabid/423/articleI D /155636/Default.aspx

http://www.philmug.ph/forum/showthread.php?p=813187

I am of the opinion that if in 2010 losing your laptop means you have lost your thesis and all of your data the school should either:

A) immediately kick you out because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B) immediately grant you tenure because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat

Send me your PayPal account Sir.

You have been the first person in quite a while I would actually donate a bit of $ for your publically demonstrated common sense.

The object in question deserves nothing.

I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for this. If you get to the point where you're doing an advanced degree and you DON'T know this, then you don't deserve the degree.

/3 back-ups, external and offsite
// and yes, the above-or close to it, has happened to me, but only ONCE

This reminds me of when I worked on my thesis. I remember putting everything in CDs everytime I made some revisions.

Anyway does anybody remember this story about the Jesus geek?

One time Jesus was working on his computer. Satan was also doing stuff on his own computer on the other side. Suddenly, the power went out. Jesus magically (I mean miraculously) makes the energy come back so he and Satan could get back to work. Unfortunately for Satan who never bothered to click the Save button, all of his work was lost. Jesus turned his computer back on and loaded the file that he was working on. An angel hovered near Satan and said "Jesus saves." Satan grinned and pointed to Jesus, who is now in panic mode. "Satan corrupts!"

RoyBatty: This is an age old story:

http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2007/10/18/stolen_laptop/index.html?s o urce=newsletter

http://www.3news.co.nz/PhD-student-has-entire-project-stolen/tabid/423/articleI D /155636/Default.aspx

http://www.philmug.ph/forum/showthread.php?p=813187

I am of the opinion that if in 2010 losing your laptop means you have lost your thesis and all of your data the school should either:

A) immediately kick you out because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B) immediately grant you tenure because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat

I felt it necessary to say thanks for the logic of your last A vs. B concept. They made me laugh :-) So at least you amused me.

I remember how pissed I was in high school when my roommate hit my computer with a frisbee while I was doing some major programming project (and somehow broke it).

Five hours lost, as well as some other useless documents, but it taught me the valuable lesson of "save your goddamn work elsewhere".

"It's so many years of my life just thrown away,"

A MA in History should take 1 year, maybe two at the current levels of tuition (5-6 total with the undergrad). He can then work at Starbucks while he writes his thesis for the next two years if he wants. Seriously, 8 years for an MA in history? He should sue the school (and he could if he actually spent that time in law school).
We had a PhD student who lost her laptop with everything, not backed up, after 4 years of work. The silly thing is she opted out of the automatic, safe (free) backup offered by the school for some insane reason. She packed it in and never finished.

/Also has three backups, one by the school, and two off site
//finished the PhD thingie

CasperImproved: RoyBatty: This is an age old story:

http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/2007/10/18/stolen_laptop/index.html?s o urce=newsletter

http://www.3news.co.nz/PhD-student-has-entire-project-stolen/tabid/423/articleI D /155636/Default.aspx

http://www.philmug.ph/forum/showthread.php?p=813187

I am of the opinion that if in 2010 losing your laptop means you have lost your thesis and all of your data the school should either:

A) immediately kick you out because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B) immediately grant you tenure because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat

I felt it necessary to say thanks for the logic of your last A vs. B concept. They made me laugh :-) So at least you amused me.

Thank you, but now I am embarrassed.

Let me see if I can piss someone off at least.

http://www.3news.co.nz/PhD-student-has-entire-project-stolen/tabid/423/articleI D /155636/Default.aspx

This grad student I linked to who lost his climate data, that was Phil Jones' student, right?

Thanks for the reminder, stupid history student....

Must do my end of the week backup of my files.

Western Digital "My Book" 1 TB external hard drive: $99.99.

TDK 25-pack of DVD+Rs: $8.49.

>50 TB data stored with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) (>1 GB transferred out per month): 15¢/GB/month.

Preserving the data and notes for your senior thesis: Priceless.

I hear these stories every so often and after finishing my own thesis I can't imagine how something like that could happen unless you're a complete idiot or trying to pull a fast one somehow. I emailed thesis chapters to my adviser at least once or twice a month for review, this is pretty standard. Not to mention sending it off for other committee members or coworkers to read. On top of that did you never work on it on another computer where you saved it? Never went to visit the family for the holidays and work on it on their computer? Never once printed out a few hard copies to proofread at the park?? It's just inconceivable that over several years of work its only saved in one place and I really have little sympathy for the guy. Somehow I'm not surprised that he's a history major.

SirEattonHogg: Thanks for the reminder, stupid history student....

Must do my end of the week backup of my files.

Why "must" you do your "end of the week" backup?

Why aren't you keeping your files and data on dropbox, which not only keeps your files backed up in the cloud, but also provides versioning of your files at the same time?

Goldencadi : And I thought my life was over when I lost ten gigs of pr0n

PFft, amateur.

Back in the days, I used to run an FServe on IRC. I had 100 gigs available.

I had to shut it down when people started acting like douchebags (uploading garbage to the FServe)

/part #freepron

RoyBatty 2010-08-27 04:07:35 AM
SirEattonHogg: Thanks for the reminder, stupid history student....

Must do my end of the week backup of my files.

Why "must" you do your "end of the week" backup?

Why aren't you keeping your files and data on dropbox, which not only keeps your files backed up in the cloud, but also provides versioning of your files at the same time?

Because I'm almost as technically unsavvy as this poor sap.

Almost. Springing for an external hard drive is about as good as it gets for me. Yeah, I know your solution is probably tons more convenient.

BackAssward: Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. This is an age-old story.

There is an story from the early eighties. I think from UC Berkley. True maybe or an urban legend.

Back then geeks played Star Trek, a text based multilayer game, which took up a lot of resources on the mainframes of the day. So the system administrators made the game verboten. But the users would install it and play it anyways. Eventually taking to changing the files names, and processes so that the administrators couldn't find it.

A bright administrator decided to purge the system once and for all. Wrote a script to grep all the files on the system for certain key words and delete the ones that matched. The scripts purged the game alright. And also kinda screwed over a mathematics student named James Kirk who came in and found his account and files deleted. And the program he had running for the last few months crunching numbers for his final theses gone.

gibbon1: BackAssward: Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it. This is an age-old story.

There is an story from the early eighties. I think from UC Berkley. True maybe or an urban legend.

Back then geeks played Star Trek, a text based multilayer game, which took up a lot of resources on the mainframes of the day. So the system administrators made the game verboten. But the users would install it and play it anyways. Eventually taking to changing the files names, and processes so that the administrators couldn't find it.

A bright administrator decided to purge the system once and for all. Wrote a script to grep all the files on the system for certain key words and delete the ones that matched. The scripts purged the game alright. And also kinda screwed over a mathematics student named James Kirk who came in and found his account and files deleted. And the program he had running for the last few months crunching numbers for his final theses gone.

Now that's classic.

CasperImproved:
A) immediately kick you out because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B) immediately grant you tenure because you've proven you're an insular arrogant dumbshiat
B. Definitely B. I worked IT at a university, and we had SEVERAL tenured professors who, despite having access to nigh-unlimited, impossible-to-ruin network storage managed to have all their critical research on their laptops (and ONLY their laptops) only to drop the damned thing.

... And then there was the incident where one of my coworkers (who didn't work there much longer) decided the solution to a professor running into the max capacity of their hard drive was to "clean out the boring looking files with extensions he didn't recognize" without regard for moving them elsewhere. Nuked about a hundred gigs of irreplaceable data and simulations. Naturally none of that was backed up, either.

Last I heard, they were considering locking down the faculty laptops and preventing them from writing to the hard drive AT ALL, but were being met with fierce resistance (because faculty think they're second to god in knowing what's right)

relcec: you could just email the docs to yourself at google or yahoo for pete's sake.

I concur. This has worked for me for years. I have three whole novels--pretty much every draft of them--saved in a google account that I keep specifically for storage. The best part is that I can always look back through the different drafts after I've made any major changes that I end up regretting, and I don't have a billion versions of the document taking up space on my comp.