I'm Back....!

[seawings]

Hello Everyone,

After one of the worst computer failures I have ever experienced, I am delighted to advise you all that as of now....."I'm Back"...!

OMG; eight weeks ago, give or take a day, my beloved computer totally and utterly simply gave up and died, right in-front of me one evening. That was it, no response from it whatsoever, a total wreck in my study; no noise, no smoke and flames just silence and a black screen on the monitor.

Having had it re-built following hard drive failure two years ago on 31st December 2018 I had taken to heed the practise of backing up the multiple hard drives every day, Yes, every day because having lost a bunch of archive material once, I never wanted it to happen again and that one taught me the reason why.

So, here I sat, with absolutely nothing; no means of communicating with you all unless I used my iPhone Forum icon, no access to SEAWINGS main website, no access to providing up-dates, totally 'out-of-it', but frankly the only thought in my head was 'how do I get this fixed' and more to the point, 'how much is this going to cost me'..?

The reasoning is simple; SEAWINGS is the front-end of the largest flying boat archive in private hands in Europe - or so I have been reliably advised - and requires a massive amount of storage that requires to be 'instantly accesssed' and 'available' in a micro-second and that requires.....POWER. The last set-up was 'shop-built' at some rediculous cost and although it worked well, it, in the end, suffered two dead-losses, this being the last and absolutely final one.

I can well remember the very raw feeling of helplessness, of bank account 'blues' at the thought of laying out a small 'home-hobbiest' fortune, at the 'for God's sake, not me again' thoughts.........

However, tonight, I am deleriously happy and excited to tell you that I am up and running again and better than before...!!!!! And that is all thanks to the company I work for and one of my fellow Directors there who is in private life, a computer building genius, Billy Faires.

The company had several VERY powerful pc's about and my M.D. Ian Wilson very kindly donated one 'to the cause' and it's a beauty..! Along comes Bill and over the past five weeks or so completely re-built it with multiple internal hard drives, more RAM than a man can handle, it went from 8GB to 28GB in a stroke and it hae every bell and whistle it needs, is dead silent, and I mean utterly, totally silent and frankly, it means that I can make mistakes far faster than I ever have been able to.!...........It is simply a MONSTER...!

I have spent the past seven weeks since lockdown at home here in England re-drafting everything from the external hard drives back onto it and then adding all the programmes I use to make all of this work, the Flying Boat Forum, SEAWINGS the website and every other program I use to function daily, and trust me, they have taken a shed-load of time to load and get the passwirds done and dusted.

I have spent all my spare time in the last two months getting back to where I was and the frightening thing is,it has taken so long as there is so much to do..!

I hope to God no-one else suffers this type of failure as it is so disheartening to go through once, and this is now the second time.

But, my all-time grateful thanks goes to Billy and Ian (MD) as without them, I would not be writing this; it would have been 'game over' as the expense would have killed the deal and been far to great for me to go through again.

There is a reason that I invite donations to the cause; it is - or certainly can be - a very expensive 'hobby' to provide free a growing website 24/7/365 and the same for a free Forum, with all the hosting fees and a load of costs surrrounding them. Every penny received goes into the 'Operating Fund' but it is at times like these that the whole thing comes back and bites you in the butt.

But, this time I have been both suffering a disaster and yet extremely fortunate in that two of my colleagues have combined not only 'save the day' but have built me a system that is so superior to the old one that the grin of satisfaction I have on my face will need to be surgically removed..!

Bill, Ian........words are simply not enough to say. 'Thanks'.

And as for you, the Forum Membership, thanks for being there and particulary, thank you for your patience whilst this issue has been sorted out, and for that I once again thank from the heart of my bottom, 'Dogsbody' aka Chris Eldridge, Chief Moderator here on The Flying Boat Forum and the only one I have ever, and will ever, need for keeping the 'fort' whilst I have been away...! Thanks, Chris.

Right, let's get cracking.........

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Amazing story. The forum has been ticking over like clockwork and I thought you were merely hunkering down and dealing with other things during the Convid-19 crisis.

Good to have you back.

[MrWidgeon]

Good Lord and I thought I had it bad when mine crashed and I lost over 50,000 images, only about 5 % of my total, but still, many were irreplaceable.
Good on you Son and glad you had the good fortune and mates in your time of need.
Welcome Back !

Bill

[dogsbody]

Yah! Yer back!

To be honest, I haven't done anything here while you've been gone. I get up in the morning, eat my bowl of cereal, get my cuppa and sit down at the 'puter. First stop is here. If there are any new posts, I read them and make comment, if applicable.

That's it! All the members behave themselves so I don't have to police the forum. I may check here once more during the day, but not always. To be honest, it's not a high traffic place.

It's is good to have the captain back.



Chris

[seawings]

Yeah, Chris............

Best 'six' cover a man could have, ever..!

Tell you straight, I never want to go through that again, ever.........would'nt wish it on my worst enemy.

[dogsbody]

I hear ya! When my harddrive crashed 3 years ago, I was floored. I only had my IPad to go online with, but a lot of my references were gone! Luckily, an old friend from back home said she could help, after the so-called professionals at a computer store said they couldn't. I shipped it across country to her and she recovered 99.5% of info on the drive. Thanks, Marlene!

Which reminds me. I really need to do another back-up.



Chris

[seawings]

....and don't forget to do that, EVER...!

Ask me how I know..!!

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

I used to change my spinning hard-drives once a year before they deteriorated too much.

I'd simply purchase a new hard drive, clone everything off the old hard drive onto the new one, then open up the laptop and swap the hard-drives over, then store the old one as a back-up.

However, these days I only use SSD drives in my computer (which has always been a laptop for the past 17 years). While they can fail, it is much less likely than with a spinning hard drive.

I backup everything to the cloud, but also keep the really important stuff on an external SSD drive, just in case.

But I've still got a large stack of spinning hard-drives sitting in a bookcase from when I used to replace them once a year.

[AlexNortonesq]

Welcome back. You have been sorely missed. Looking forward to that backlog of stuff being posted as you are able.