I almost fell for the classic crypto currency blunder. . .

trezor naked brokennaked trezor fixedOne of my older Trezor’s had a little hardware issue (USB port broke off).  when i went to look for my paper backup, it was not where i expected.  With no backup, I had no way to transfer the coins or tokens.  This is essentially how coins get burned.  Without access to the key, they aren’t your coins. it would be a shame to loose these assets, so i sought out a solution.

repair workspace trezor testingLuckily, i had some expert help.  my guy, referred me to his guy.  amazing work.  Huge thanks to Bill, for averting catastrophe.  now i am putting my new paper backup somewhere safe.  (and somewhere else, also safe)

Status update:

Backup Begins Again

For the first time in i don’t know how long, i have enough backup storage to backup ALL my critical data and even some less critical data.  This also marks the end of my OS X Server.  From a graphite G4 through so many minis, I have always had an OS X Server on my network. . . until now.  I left the label from its previous installation while it was in operation.  This mini i inherited the way i acquire so much equipment, it’s previous owner thought it was broken.  I tried to explain, but i wasn’t going to say no to this lovely unit.

Bad Server

Status update:

synology NAS

I have an aged storage array in a critical roll on my network. I have wanted to replace it for years, but the expense and the effort always kept it in the future. Apart from the speed being underwhelming, it has always been reliable and problem free.  My recent backup problems have necessitated a new and much larger backup destination.  This created the perfect storm allowing me to buy a huge new NAS to take over the rolls of my current slowpoke.  Thus freeing my old, slow, but reliable array to act as solely a backup.  This will breath new life and impressive capacity to my infrastructure and finally for the foreseeable future put an end to my local backup capacity issues.

Some of the preparations involve typology changes.  Changing the very roadways and turnpikes of my network. If you are doing a performance upgrade, might as well squeeze out all the juice (link aggregation, etc).  This upgrade is so big it will probably take the entire weekend just to prepare and rest of the month to complete!  what could possibly go wrong?  I prefer to think of all the things that will go right when it’s done.

My favorite products play well together!

DiskStation and Amplifi

Ubiquity’s Amplifi wifi mesh system is awesome and incredibly easy to setup. It also looks great next to Synology’s DiskStation product line.  Together they make the most amazing Time Capsule replacement. The functionality doesn’t stop there.  The DiskStation does so much more then just backup.  As a backup however, it allows you to mirror the disks for extra protection as well as synchronize between other servers, DiskStations, cloud storage, or even AWS S3!  Getting nearly 200Mbit everywhere!  Already backing up three computers.  What other services should I add to the Synology?

ode to the backup!

As if I haven’t already learned my lesson, i continue to tempt fate. just yesterday i skated by on my data recovery skills and pure luck when i nearly lost 200GB of personally encoded tested and tagged dvds! i can only imagine how many hours of man and machine work to went into that collection. i’ll only have to redo a handful of movies. lets hope they haven’t wondered off, that they are in their cases, and all the horrible things that drove me to encode them all in the first place. if you care about it, back it up. storage is so cheap now. there is no reason not to just back everything up!