Life, Taxes & Hard Drives

Kinda stuck in a holding pattern of sorts this week. I did an audition last weekend, turned it in Monday, and then haven't heard back about anything yet... so it may have collapsed as a project (since even if I was approved they could pull it for time since the deadline was super tight) as it would have been slapdashed together to get something out. So who knows... work on Puss In Boots is coming soon though.... plus I did my taxes to get them done in case the government had shut down since who knows what part (if any) of the IRS would still be working if it did.

Other than that I've been sketching, digital painting and mostly backing up my external hard drives, reorganizing my files, and deleting old ones that I don't need anymore. It now seems that even 2TB drives aren't enough. Ha! Backing up my work and other files I've collected onto my Back Up drive (a smaller 500GB drive that sits next to my computer for immediate things that I'm working on or need to pull from) and then after about three weeks or so I back them up to the Back Up-Back Up drive (one of my main drives with mostly everything on it) and then again onto, not one, but TWO Back Up-Back Up-Back Up drives (two clones of the previous drive with everything on it, BUT with much more including comics scans, audio stuff, teaching stuff, etc. And I have two drives in case one fails. These two are the main drives that I can't lose though.) is an several hour process and I usually wait till the weekend at night to do it since you just have to sit and do it. It's a long and boring process but has to be done.

I seem to remember when I used to burn CD's and DVD's with data on them but now it's all about the external hard drive since they hold much more stuff and tranferring files over is much faster than burning. There was a time back in 2004 or so when I'd go to the computer store (no longer in business either) and buy 9 or 10 spindles of CDs or DVDs on sale so that I'd have them, but in the last two years alone I think I've only burned 3 CDs total! Technology is rapidly changing so fast that even the flash drives (or thumb drives) that were the rage for about a year have fallen by the wayside as hard drives have surpassed them in terms of speed and space, as well as keeping the physical dimensions of the drives down to a nice compact size that you can put in your pocket. 2TB drives are a little bigger in most cases but are about the size of a hardcover book.

It may seem excessive to some with all the backing up but I laugh at those who lose all their stuff when their systems crash and they didn't ever think to back anything up and have now lost it all. It's a large peace-of-mind to fire up a drive and back up the day's work and then go to bed knowing it's safe. Once you accumulate a large amount of stuff you don't want to lose it. Even working from the hotel room from my previous trip I would back up the night's work onto a flash drive and then a small external hard drive as well since I didn't want to rely on my laptop though I'm sure it was safe. Laptops can get man-handled going through the airport security and being thrown in the bins as they go down the conveyor belt.

I'm the Back Up Kid!