Nobody Cares about Tech Support

[Argent Stonecutter]

You should be running automatic backup software that keeps your backups up to date at least daily.

 

[bubblesort]

You should be running automatic backup software that keeps your backups up to date at least daily.

Yeah, I know, I just never found good software to do that for me. It's either too much of a pain in the ass to set up right, or it's too much of a pain in the ass to restore from the backups, or both. It's just easier to manually copy the files I need backed up with drag and drop. That also motivates me to keep my files well organized, so I can back them up manually like that. If I ever find software that just stores the files I need backed up, without crazy built-in compression that's hard to use, I'll use it, but until then, I'll just keep doing it manually.

For what I do, a monthly double back up to two external drives seems to work ok. I've never lost anything of serious value. It just takes time.

Oh, and the Windows Update ran fine for me! No noticable issues for me, so far.

 

[Romana]

You should be running automatic backup software that keeps your backups up to date at least daily.

That works for a lot of people, but some of us don't want extra processes running in the background.
It may not screw with the latency or other jaguars deciding the way it used to, but I see no reason to find out the hard way. I make complete backups at times of my choosing, and can restore very quickly if need be. I've not lost anything that way yet.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

That works for a lot of people, but some of us don't want extra processes running in the background.

That's a ship that's sailed long since.

Yeh, I remember when backups meant spending Saturday swapping tapes with logins disabled because the cartridge drive took up every clock cycle a 286 had to spare, but damn.

 

[Romana]

That's a ship that's sailed long since.

Yeh, I remember when backups meant spending Saturday swapping tapes with logins disabled because the cartridge drive took up every clock cycle a 286 had to spare, but damn.

OK, but I'm not sure what that had to do with what I said..
I always used disk imaging software and a HDD. I was referring to Widows background processes, not clock cycles.
It may be that side there are now so many cores in processor that the monitoring processes don't bump heads with the recording ones, but I don't see a need, to find out for myself.
A full disk cleanup, defrag, and image backup takes very little time these days, at least with SSDs.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I was referring to Widows background processes, not clock cycles.

1. I don't actually recall when the last version of consumer Windows where background processes that were mostly waiting on I/O had any effect at all on foreground ones, but it was way before multi-core CPUs were generally available on personal computers. I know Windows 1.0 copied the daft Mac co-operative multitasking model but I'm pretty sure Windows 9x supported concurrent processes, and absolutely by the time Windows XP came out it was a non-issue. And, of course, now even $10.00 SBCs are multicore.

2. Memory pressure is a bigger issue, maybe. But today if you "only" have 8G you're probably on a netbook.

3. In any case, most backup software is scheduled and has zero background processes in core when it's not actually doing a backup.

Your antivirus software should be a way bigger worry. The antivirus industry was created by crooks. Literally.

 

[Noodles]

I just use a NAS that backs up to the cloud. I also mostly work out of directories on the NAS or my One Drive folder.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

What NAS do you use? I've been using a server running FreeNAS but I'm looking for something less power hungry. My last ARM-based NAS was kind of anemic, so I'm leery of jumping back to an embedded box like that.

 

[Clara D.]

You should be running automatic backup software that keeps your backups up to date at least daily.

EaseUS ToDo gives me enough functionality in the free version to be useful.

And I've recovered things with it -- when I bork up a bunch of Skyrim mods, or my Firefox profile eats itself it's come in handy.

As far as overhead, it will only bog things down while doing the actual backup, I have it setup so I know when it'll be happening. AFAIK, there's no "monitoring," it does all the file comparision when doing the backup (I use incremental to save space)

As far as cloud backup -- I've discovered that it can be brutal trying to re-download 100's of Gigs. So I just stuff *truly* important 'I can't loose this' docs into Dropbox (with Google Sync as a redundancy).

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

 

[Noodles]

What NAS do you use? I've been using a server running FreeNAS but I'm looking for something less power hungry. My last ARM-based NAS was kind of anemic, so I'm leery of jumping back to an embedded box like that.

I just saw this.

I have a Synology DS213j with a pair of 4TB WD Reds in it. I like a lot fo the build in software for it. Like there is a DS Video App that lets me play videos from it to my fire TV and whatnot.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

RAID-1 I assume.

 

[bubblesort]

I have a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. I run mobile grid viewer on it, but I would like a more full viewer, and I don't trust the versions of Lumiya that are floating around. The jetbook is not super powerful, but I think it might run a full SL viewer with low graphics settings. The processor is ARM x64, but Chrime OS is x86. It runs a Debian based distro of Linux on a virtual machine, within Cheome OS. The linux is also x86. So I started digging around looking for a currently maintained SL viewer for x86 linux, and haven't found anything yet. I really don't want to mess with compiling it from code. Does anybody have any suggestions that don't involve compiling from code for x86 ARM architecture?

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[Free]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

What NAS do you use? I've been using a server running FreeNAS but I'm looking for something less power hungry. My last ARM-based NAS was kind of anemic, so I'm leery of jumping back to an embedded box like that.

Looky looky what I got for you: openmediavault - The open network attached storage solution

Open Media Vault - a NAS solution/distribution based on Debian, like FreeNAS, which runs on Linux for Raspberry 4 as well on normal x86 CPUs.

With the CM4 Compute Module you can use this to build some quite pretty nice NAS enclosures. Have a look at the feature set and screenshots, it's actually quite a nice software.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I have a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. I run mobile grid viewer on it, but I would like a more full viewer, and I don't trust the versions of Lumiya that are floating around. The jetbook is not super powerful, but I think it might run a full SL viewer with low graphics settings. The processor is ARM x64, but Chrime OS is x86. It runs a Debian based distro of Linux on a virtual machine, within Cheome OS. The linux is also x86. So I started digging around looking for a currently maintained SL viewer for x86 linux, and haven't found anything yet. I really don't want to mess with compiling it from code. Does anybody have any suggestions that don't involve compiling from code for x86 ARM architecture?

Do you mean x32 ARM architecture?

Looky looky what I got for you: openmediavault - The open network attached storage solution

I've looked at that. There's dozens of equivalent packages... like the FreeNAS I ended up using.

First, I'm dubious about the RPi in this role. We use them extensively at work, from the original through the RPI4, and it's kind of anemic in the I/O space. Storage drives would have to be USB: if I was going that way I'd just use my old Mac mini. I'm pretty sure it'll run FreeNAS.

Second, that still leaves me building my own enclosure, and that's kind of the most expensive part. Again, if I wanted to leave it splayed all over a desktop I've already got that.

Once you start looking for a board with multiple SATA ports and an enclosure and everything you might as well just buy an embedded NAS that's already got all that, for less.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

FreeNAS is heavily targeted at the Enterprise sector, while OMV is more geared towards SME and private house holds. FreeNAS uses ZFS as its only file system for everything, while OMV does not. For OMV ZFS is optional, so you can just create ext4/XFS file systems for your shares if you want to. So if you don't want to use ZFS, then this is entirely possible with OMV, but not FreeNAS.

I know that the RPi alone would be slow. This is why I mentioned the Computing Module 4 - or CM4. With the CM4 you have a native PCIe slot, which you can use to plugin a real SATA controller. With that kind of setup I/O speed increases heavily.

Yes, you would need to build probably your own enclosure, until the market gets traction and you can just buy them off the shelf.

But the nice thing about OMV is: if you don't want to use the Raspberry Pi, then you don't have to, because it also runs on X86 without problems, so any Intel and AMD CPU you can imagine.

Anyway, you should never build your NAS around USB only. This is quite dangerous.

 

[bubblesort]

Do you mean x32 ARM architecture?

Yeah, that's what I mean. After digging around, it looks like there is no viewer that does what I want. The hardware probably couldn't handle SL anyway, but it would have been interesting to try it.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

The processor is ARM x64, but Chrime OS is x86.

Um no, OS matches the CPU, Chrome is available in ARM32, ARM64, x86 and x86-64 variants. Your Chromebook is running the ARM64 version of Chrome

It runs a Debian based distro of Linux on a virtual machine, within Cheome OS. The linux is also x86.

If you've got a x86-64 Debian VM on your Chromebook you could try to run Firestorm inside that. Run "uname -a" in a Terminal in your Debian VM to know for sure. And then pray the VM does GPU passthrough and that the GPU in your Chromebook has enough oomph to display SL. If you're using a 32 bit Debian in a VM, I don't know why you'd be doing that.

So I started digging around looking for a currently maintained SL viewer for x86 linux, and haven't found anything yet.

SL viewers are a PITA to compile for and get to run on 32 bit Linuxes. LL basically gave up on their 32 bit Linux build and and as far as I know never modernized their build process to do a 64 bit Linux build. It's why I had to switch to Firestorm.

Does anybody have any suggestions that don't involve compiling from code for x86 ARM architecture?

You mean ARM64, and your best bet would be to get someone to try to compile an ARM64 build into a package that you can use on your Chromebook.