Thanks Jim, I think I am somewhat redundant also. When I do a SAVE (ALT+S) my DXL and CTY file goes to DX4WIN/SAVE When I do a BACKUP (ALT+B) I don't know where my stuff goes. I should know, but I don't My SECONDARY BACKUP goes to a SD card. I have Carbonite, QUICKEN BACK UP, and my ISP has a cloud at COX.NET. These three run a back up on their own schedule at least once a day, one of them is once an hour. I have my DXL file saved on those back ups. I have to admit I really don't know where they go and how to retrieve them if I need to but feel confident if I ever need to retrieve them Carbonite, Quicken, and Cox will be able to help me. Carbonite also has a mirror image backup on an Ext HD.
We have iPhones and have the Apple Cloud to save and share photos etc from the iPhone to the Apple Cloud. My in house WiFi (password protected) interconnects all my PC's laptops, tablets, iPhones, printer, and home security. I think I have it set to save my DXL file also. My system is not as fast or complete as yours. However, being an EE guy and not an IT I don't understand all the newer IT technology or programming that I should. I don't want to say I'm getting old (72) but the XYL teases me when we go to an Air Museum and the actual planes I used to fly are now static display museum pieces. Things have gone a long way since my first IBM Clone in the 1980's with the 5 1/2 inch floppy disk that you had to insert in the drive for the PC to boot up. Everything was DOS then and you had a mess of floopy disks to insert to run programs. A year or so later HD's got cheap enough I could afford to buy one. The memory size was very small but now I could boot up and run some programs from the HD without messing with the floppies. My first logging program was WJ20 and first contest logger was CT, both in the DOS format. Before that, I remember in contests hand logging onto a paper log with paper DUPE sheets spread across the room, one for each band. At that time, I was a test engineer at Rockwell Intl working with the space shuttle, MX Missile, and B1B Bomber avionics. From what I understand today's iPhones, etc, have more computing capability and power that the Space Shuttle computers. Good thing the Vulcans decided to share their technology with us humans. -----Original Message----- From: Jim Reisert AD1C [mailto:jjreis...@alum.mit.edu] Sent: Monday, January 4, 2016 10:38 AM To: DX4WIN Reflector Cc: Alan Zack Subject: Re: [Dx4win] Missing QSOs DX4WIN has two save locations: 1. The SAVE directory 2. The Secondary Backup Directory you can specify on the QSO tab of your preferences #1 should *always* be a local hard drive, preferably one connected via an IDE or (S)ATA interface, not a USB interface. You want your log to be saved as fast as possible. This minimizes the amount of time you need to wait between exiting DX4WIN and shutting down your computer. #2 saves at the same media speed as #1. If you use a USB flash drive, then it will take DX4WIN longer to write the files to the secondary save location. I gave up on using USB flash drives for backup years ago - they are just too darn slow for me. They tend to "lock up" DX4WIN the entire time the files are being written. I guess that's a good thing if you are planning on shutting down your computer. It's not so good if you want to quickly save your log and work someone else right away. Here's what I do: 1. I leave my computer on all the time. 2. I never exit DX4WIN unless I have to reboot. My log is always open, but saved when I am not there (see #3). 3. I try to remember to save (ALT-S) my log every time I step away from the operating position. 99.44% of the time at least. 4. My Secondary Backup Directory is actually DX4W805\SAVE2, i.e. the same local drive as the SAVE directory. 5. I use SyncBackSE to synchronize my entire DX4W805 directory to a location on my home's local area network (my development/office computer upstairs). This allows me to access the log from the other computer, as well as synchronize changes in both directions. I also synchronize my WriteLog directory the same way. 6. I have a local Acronis backup job on the ham computer that runs every night, to a USB-connected hard drive (Western Digital My Desk). Note that I only started this a week or two ago! I have never been unable to recover data from a crashed ham computer, i.e. I have never lost the hard drive. 7. I have a local Acronis backup job on the development computer that runs every night, to a USB-connected hard drive (Western Digital My Desk). 8. I use Carbonite to continuously backup my development computer to the cloud. I realize the above is almost certainly overkill, but I have never lost my log, only a rare QSO here or there, mostly due to writing the log from the development computer, and forgetting to reload it on the ham computer before logging a new QSO. When I wake up in the morning, I have at least five backup copies of my log, in addition to the copy in the SAVE directory: - SAVE2 directory - network path - ham computer backup - development computer backup - cloud I could probably run Carbonite on the ham computer, and get rid of the local Acronis backup, however, that costs more than my current solution. Local backups are good when you accidentally delete a lot of stuff and want to get it back quickly. Cloud backup is good for recovering a random file here or there that hasn't changed recently. Neither solution is ideal for recovering a recently-created file that was just deleted. I believe you can use Windows System Restore to do this, though I have not had a chance to try it yet. Check your PC - if System Restore is NOT enabled, you may want to do so. That's probably way too much information. Regardless of what you do, do *not* "log to" the Secondary Backup Directory directly! I don't know what will happen, but it probably isn't good. 73 - Jim AD1C p.s. my current plan of record is to replace my ham hard drive with a 500 GB SSD (which I already have in hand), and use the existing mechanical drive for backup, in place of the USB drive. My concern is that if I am operating a contest at 3 a.m. when the backup job starts, it will cause a noticiable slowdown that will interfere with my contest operating. Backing up to a SATA drive should be much faster and less noticable. Plus, if the computer crashes while operating, it will reboot much more quickly from an SSD. -- Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreis...@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us ______________________________________________________________ DX4WIN mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/dx4win Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:DX4WIN@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
