Tag Archives: Digital

Time-consuming Backups

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It was bound to happen one day, I couldn’t trust my backup system anymore as it was giving errors. So I’ve been busy for at least a week sorting out my digital footprint. Just like I’ve been busy sorting out boxes for months it keeps surprising me how much stuff a person collects over time. I have two external hard drives in raid that I’ve been using to make backups for years now, but the time had come to change to an upgraded version which I bought a couple of weeks ago, a NAS with two 4TB harddisks. Copying over the network seemed to come with some hickups as well but I’ve managed tonight to sort all the information (2TB of ‘stuff’) on the new NAS.

In the past I’ve made use of TimeMachine but I stopped using it a couple of years ago to manually make backups instead. TimeMachine keeps making copies of the same files over and over again and since I had a couple of crashes over the years I ended up with several copies of system folders and copies of a folder structure of things that I wanted to keep. I’ve been going through each and every folder to delete duplicates and arrange a new filing structure. Some months ago when I started to sort out those boxes I’ve thrown out each and every item that I nolonger used, either giving it to charity shops or putting it in bin bags to have it collected and destroyed.

I was surprised by the -insane- amount of ‘stuff’ that I had managed to collect over time as I wasn’t using most of it anymore or I simply nolonger needed it. Cleaning out each and every box made me feel better and better as it was lifting a weight from my shoulders. Decluttering is the most effective thing to do to me, making space around me and also in my head. But I didn’t expect the amount of digital clutter and I found out that I felt less comfortable deleting system files and backups I had made because of crashes, tho I’ve managed to delete about 180Gb of dublicates by manually comparing files. Yes a total drag but I kept in mind that I only had to do this once ;)

I always got the impression that all my photo archives would take most of the disk space but boy was I mistaken. It was good having to go through each and every folder to see what was in there and if I really ‘needed’ it still. Most of it I got rid of anyway and the largest folders where the ones containing software and those system backups. Folders with 200.000+ files in them, old system folders, folders that nolonger had any use since I’ve bought at least four other computers after making the first backup and changed OS about three or four times as well. I guess the largest is my music collection but since I’ve started buying from iTunes this issue has become more organised.

Sorting my digital history was a total pain but I’m happy that I’ve managed to finish it within a time span of two weeks on and off. It was something that had been dragging my heels for years. I was extremely reluctant to act on it because of the time-consuming copying and checking, but as the other backup system slowly became unreliable I was forced to do this after all those years and I feel relieved now the job is mostly done. I still have some really old IDE disks to check but these are so old, I don’t expect to find anything spectacular on these that is worth saving. Still… I need to see what’s on them before I will use brute force and destroy all the sensitive data ;)

The challenge now, is to keep things organised and tidy… but when I think back of all the aggravation caused by having to go through many folders containing 200.000+ files I’m pretty sure I can keep an eye on that to make sure!

Granted Aspiration

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The Gods must have been pleased or something: yesterday, right after I posted about my frustration with Barclays all the pieces seemed to come together all of a sudden. All problems got solved one after the other and best of all, even the Barclays problem was finally solved. I thought it wasn’t real… yesterday wasn’t real, I must have been dreaming *pinch me!*

I’ve sent out an email Sunday evening, the first job application I sent to NL, which I found online. Closing date was ‘before May 4′: Monday morning basically. I was late and probably too late if you’d calculate in office hours but I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass so I explained why I was that late and sent it off 22.45 UK time (15 minutes before midnight NL time).

Tuesday I received a request for a digital portfolio. I worked all night and stayed up till 07.00 Wednesday morning, slept for four hours and got up again to finish a new designed, improved and updated-with-all-the-recent-stuff-I’ve-been-doing digital portfolio. I sent it off in the afternoon 14.00 NL time. That evening I had an appointment with a client to discuss new projects.

Yesterday morning I received a call from the company in Amsterdam about an interview. They explained the procedure and asked if I happened to be in NL within the next few weeks. I wasn’t but I wouldn’t mind booking a flight if I had to. Later that day they called again after meeting up to discuss this. They really wanted to see me so I booked flights ten minutes later…

Right after I received the long-awaited phone call from the local business banking manager who was extremely apologetic telling me that what happened should never have happened. They’ll reimburse all charges and she’d personally make sure the account is closed. A little voice in my head tells me that she must have been afraid to get it in the neck from her boss *hehe*.

Like I said in my other posts something is going on in the Universe… everything seems to go so amazingly smooth lately and it all turns out so incredibly positive and inspirational for me that it scares the hell out of me. Why? Coz it’s going too smooth *LOL* And this Capricorn doesn’t trust smooth transitions…which doesn’t necessarily mean that she can’t get used to it ;)

Flights are booked, days are planned and a place to stay is arranged so while I’ll be going to have an interview I’ll also be treating myself to a mini vacation while I can. I so deserve it.

Have a great weekend!