N-Scale Magazine on CD

[nickelplate759]

Yes Chris, that pesky paradigm has shifted.  Ed is a living proof.  Physical backup media is no longer cool.  Who wants to riffle through all those disks sitting around the house. 

I used to backup to tape, then CD-R, then DVD-R, then BluRay-R, and in the end none of it was big enough and it all cost too much, so I stopped.  I have a Raid1 array for local backup (costs about $200 for 2 hard drives), and a service for Cloud backup that costs less than $100/year.   I'm not sure I really need both - maybe I'm just paranoid.

The problem with local backup only, cheap as it is, is that if there is a local catastrophe then your backup is gone too.  Back in the day this was solved by literally shipping backup media to an off-site storage facility - today the Cloud serves the same purpose.

Oh - and I have all the N-Scale Magazine CDroms, copied to my local hard drive for quick and easy access.

[Chris333]

Who wants to pay another bill? No matter how small it is.

I don't use my CD drive often, but did just use it to put my HK Porter catalogs back on my computer.

[jereising]

I wouldn't touch the cloud with YOUR ten foot pole.  Internet goes out, you're dead.  And yeah, that doesn't happen often, but I guarantee when it does you will then need something from the cloud. 

My latest machine (built to run MS Flight Simulator) has no optical drive.  And the main drive is a 2tb solid state drive.  I back up to flash drives.  I also back up to a fifteen year old Seagate outboard drive kept for that purpose.  I DO have a USB optical in case that's the only way I can get a file...

[porkypine52]

NO CLOUD for me.  I'll take CD/DVD's any day.  Right now I can't get OFFICE to open and I can't find out why?  Cloud?  I'll continue to backup on an external H/D, flash drive or such.  Used to be you could BUY Office, NOW you have to subscribe.  I'll stick with N-Scale Magazine's CD's.  Work FINE for me.  Money well spent.  Have them ALL. 

DIESELS?!?!?!  We don't need NO stinkin' Diesels!!!
N-Scale  The INDIANA RAILWAY.......Still 100% Steam Powered in 2021


The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Ronald Reagan

[NtheBasement]

I may have bought the last HP laptop model that came with a CD drive.  I've long since copied the CDs to my laptop and then backed them up from there.  Flash drives are going for like $20/Terabyte.  Not sure if USB sockets will disappear before or after SD sockets.

@nickelplate759's point about losing everything in a house fire is a good one.  I used to leave my backup flash drive at work.  Now I store em in the freezer which is about as fire-proof (and water proof) as things get.  I put them in a ziplock and don't open it before the condensation goes away.

There is a big risk with cloud storage too.  Companies have been know to... change their business model.  Yeah, that's it, "business model", not "extortion" or "ransom".  Can you say Photobucket?

[MK]

Used to be you could BUY Office, NOW you have to subscribe.

You still can buy it.  I bought a copy to install on a neighbor's desktop just last week.  Installed and activated without any issues.  No need to subscribe/rent.

[Pamela Clapp]

Thank you for all your support and comments concerning N-Scale Magazine on CD. If you are looking for a particular article or road name, the index is invaluable, making it an easy search. Each CD covers 5 years, cover to cover, beginning with 1989.
I've read through all the comments and I do see that some of you do not have a CD drive. You can purchase one for around $30. We have also purchased a separate CD drive since some of our authors still send their articles on CD. This is a great way to go if you want to view a lot of material. You can also take it with you wherever you go. Or if your preference is to download the material off the CD, you can download it to your desktop. Or, if you find that particular article you want to take to your train room and build that special project and follow the step by step process the author has, you can print the article and take it with you. There are so many options. The download is available as a PDF file. We don't offer the PDF as a download online though because the files are very large, covering 5 years, cover to cover. Again, thank you.

[nickelplate759]

Thank you again for offering these - I do have the whole set!

You hint at something that not all of us may be aware of - making large downloads available has a continuing cost to the vendor.  The full set of N Scale Magazine CDs is about 3.25 GB on disk.  It's not huge, but making it available for download isn't a one time cost - it continues for as long as the download is available.   

I knew this, but hadn't really considered it in the impact of it on a small business.

[mmagliaro]

And here I just bought a replacement internal DVD/CD-RW drive for my 5 year old Dell laptop, which is still my primary computer.

If I can't use optical, I use USB thumb drives, or outboard USB hard drives for copies and backups.

No cloud.  Stay away...   STAY cloud...  BAD cloud,   BAD....

Backup media, no matter what it is, is really so cheap for terabytes upon terabytes of storage now.  The cloud lets you get at your stuff wherever you are.  That's its one and only selling point.  But if I used it for that convenience, I'd still back everything up to
physical media of my own.

[JMaurer1]

Wanting the complete SP Trainline magazine set, I had to go buy an external cd/dvd reader/writer...cost like $25. This also let me get the Mainline Modeler and NGSL CDs and some others. I don't put any faith in the cloud (especially with all the hacking going on...how long before ransomware in the cloud?). Also, someone somewhere has to have physical storage of the cloud and if that fails, goes out of business, or is destroyed, then what. I have a 2TB portable hard drive that I keep the stuff I need with me (so I can have all of my important files at work and at home).

What is confusing is that the N Scale scans can't fit on one or two disks (especially if the scans are lower resolution). CDs...? DVDs have much more room (4.7 Gig compared to 650 meg on a CD). Instead of giving me six disks that I have to keep track of, give me one DVD instead.

[Sumner]

........  The full set of N Scale Magazine CDs is about 3.25 GB on disk.  It's not huge, but making it available for download isn't a one time cost - it continues for as long as the download is available....

Yep we tend to think that things on the internet are 'free'.  They might be free to read and use but someone has to pay to have everything we read or see on the internet.  It is all on computer servers and they cost money and connection to the internet so we can access them costs.

This site and every site you are visiting cost them to be there.  I just paid about $600 the other day to make sure my site will stay up for the next 4 years or so if something happens to me.  I found a new place to host my site a few years ago that is costing less but still it costs me a couple hundred a year to keep the site up.  I have a PayPal button one can donate a dollar or two to help like most sites use that don't have adds on them to help pay expenses.  I have over a hundred items one can 3D print on thingiverse.com and know that there have been hundreds of downloads of them but haven't received even a dollar as appreciation.

Consider supporting sites you visit and use if you aren't already doing that.  I have a few that I set up a $2 a month PayPal donation to each month.  Am I ever going to notice that I sent them $2.  Probably not when you can't hardly buy anything for $2.

Sorry for the rant,

Sumner

[mmagliaro]

...snip...

...
I don't put any faith in the cloud (especially with all the hacking going on...how long before ransomware in the cloud?). Also, someone somewhere has to have physical storage of the cloud and if that fails, goes out of business, or is destroyed, then what.
....

It might not even be a failure, a rate increase, or a company that goes out of business.  And as we painfully learned from the Photobucket disaster a few years ago,  your "cloud" storage provider can decide to suddenly change the terms under which they'll keep your stuff.  They may not just increase your rates, and they might not even let you get your files off-a their cloud without holding you hostage for money.

(I have an impending sense of doom that somebody is about to put up a clip of the Rolling Stones)

[nickelplate759]

My data-preservation anxiety has led me to redundancy.   I have a home backup solution - automatic backups of all home PCs to a RAID1 array (in case a backup disk fails - that happened recently).   I pay for a cloud backup service (about $100/year) too, because it's offsite.  If my home is destroyed my data is recoverable.   

If my data at home is destroyed at the same time that my cloud service stops working, then A) I'm screwed and B) there's a good chance I have bigger worries than losing my data.

[SteamDonkey]

I just ordered these discs the other day, after having intended to do so for years.

Adam

[sirenwerks]

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Ronald Reagan

And yet, when disaster strikes, most people turn to 'government' to solve their calamity.  Got a noisy neighbor, call the cops.  Need to drive your truck somewhere, expect the road to be built and bridges to be maintained.  Got a house fire, call the fire department.  Got a wildfire, hope your state or federal land agency is available.  Hurricane blows things over, expect government to orchestrate the righting of it all.  Who developed the internet, anyway? (Hint, not Al Gore). 


This anti-government crap bites my nuggets, not because I think government is 100% cool and right, but because people are the government (voters, employees, contractors, service users...), unless they fail to participate.  Complaints about government shouldn't be uttered until you can talk about how recently you attended a municipal/county board meeting and positively participated (not just bitched, because just complaining is basically expecting government to solve your problems).


Ronny also said “We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”  Applied towards participation in democracy, this means it is not government's fault that it is perceived as broken, but the fault disinterested individual who simply lob complaints and misinformation, and don't take an active role; or they can't accept that they're not in the majority and must take a seat in the negotiation process.