Castle Paradox

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

BACKUP YOUR GAME!

Everyone is going to suffer hard drive failures at some point. It is not an "if" that depends on how well you take care of your system, it's going to be a "when".

My own hard drive narrowly failed me, which contains my RPG that I lazily spent about a year on now. I could have ended up losing that file, and having to start all the way back to an early demo...

No, that's not true at all. All I would have lost would have been a few graphics and maybe some map changes. Why is this? Is it because I know some l33t file recovery, or because I can fix my hard drive?

No, it's because I upload a .zip to Geocities... This isn't a periodic thing either. I upload every single time I make a significant addition or change to my game and finished for that time. Had my hard drive truly messed up, I would not have lost much at all, and I would not be in the same position as every one else.

I will also try e-mailing myself my game whenever I remember.

For the record, I *did* lose a game before, and I regret completely forgetting to back it up.
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Onlyoneinall · **Bug finder** Joined: 16 Jul 2005 Posts: 746

What is almost as frustrating is when there is a bug or issue with the OHR that almost seems to cause your game to corrupt. What?!?!

But this is a good announcement to make, because having more than one recent backup copy always saves the grief of losing something you worked so hard on. I keep about weekly backups in my Gmail account, and more frequent backups in my flash drives.

I think I'll go back up my files again today, just because.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

To make the process of making the .zip file a bit easier and not having to rename things, I simply name the folder that my game is in the same as what the filename is going to be, which is all undercase letters and no spaces. Then, Powerarchiver has a nifty feature where I can just highlight files I want and compress them with a right click context menu with the folder name as the file name.

Other than logging into Geocities, this helps make backing up and uploading more of a reflex process.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

Jack · **the fool** Joined: 30 Jul 2004 Posts: 773

I use a memory stick to backup everything that's important to me on my PC. Plus it's nice to be able to move from PC to PC without having to download anything. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
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The Wobbler · Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 2221

Onlyoneinall · **Bug finder** Joined: 16 Jul 2005 Posts: 746

Make sure you get a good quality USB flash drive though. Last Christmas my dad got me a really cheap 8 gb flash drive (It didn't even have a name on it - it just said 8 gb and the package had no name or anything) and it ended up that about 1/3 of the time, it would 'copy' the files onto the usb drive, but all it actually did was copy the file name. So then you would have to remove the drive, plug it in again, and hope it actually copied it right this time (meaning you would have to double check every single time to make sure the file was absolutely there). I even had to reformat it several times because it corrupted the data in the flash drive.

So after I let my dad know about it, he took it back and never fixed it or got a replacement. Sad...

Better to stick with company names, like Kingston or Imation for really important files.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

RedMaverickZero · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:37 am Post subject:

When I was in college I had used a 1GB Memorex USB Drive and it has worked wonderfully for me. Actually alot of the people in my art classes had the same one (hard to think we never accidentally had em swapped, heh). So they're really good and very reliable.

I think I paid 20-30 bucks for mine. I'm sure the price has dropped on em since I bought it 2 years ago.
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---------------Projects----
Mr.Triangle's Maze: 70%
Takoyaki Surprise: 70%

Artimus Bena · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:47 am Post subject:

I worked at radioshack not too long ago; we sold 1gig flash drives for 14 bucks. 4gig flash drives were typically 40, but only while there was a sale (which was almost continuous actually).
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TMC · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:23 am Post subject:

I use SVN for projects plus CDs, onto which I copy everything do once a week. Using CD's means that I have a permanent copy of snapshots in time (dozens of CDs in fact) and over time build up most of my data. What I've learnt: Windows can do awful things when burning CDs, especially Windows Vista, so a corrupted CD recovery tool is essential.

But what I really need to do is take full harddisk backups, because they're really disorganised. I'd like to use RAID-1.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

The Wobbler · Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 2221

Onlyoneinall · **Bug finder** Joined: 16 Jul 2005 Posts: 746

TMC · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:29 pm Post subject:

I'm using the free version of Isobuster. However, if you use Vista's "Live Filesystem", you'd need UDF filesystem support, which requires registering.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

The Wobbler · Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 2221

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:47 am Post subject:

You guys are all so awesome! Yay for keeping backups!

You make me proud!