I'm kind of stone-age, for

I'm kind of stone-age, for the internet of course, so I have copies of everything on three different hard drives of mine and none on line. Losing my files is one of those nightmares that can keep me up at night.

Memory is cheap so why rent the space from someone else?

Or you can buy the two data DVDs

Or you can buy the two data DVDs ... $20 each, for issues 1-50 and 51-100, it's about 40 cents per issue. We're at issue 137 coming up, so we will be issuing a third data DVD by about August of next year.

Just depends on how much your time is worth. The one good thing is getting these DVDs gives you a guaranteed backup of all the issues on them.

https://store.mrhmag.com/store/c12/other

We sell a lot of these.

????? People still have DVD

????? People still have DVD drives?

Thought I was the last one. (And had to get a USB plug in one for the laptop's)

I’ll bet for a couple extra bucks…..

Joe could fit them on a single SD card.  I was just amazed that I got a 512 Gig card with a camera.   

Uggh - All my back issues are gone

As others have noted, & as I learned the hard way, never save anything on a computer only once, & not in the same physical location.

I use external hard drives (Western Digital, NOT Seagate). As well as model RR stuff, I have scanned all my legal documents, family photos, etc, & photographed everything in the house (including the trains) in case I need to make an insurance claim because of fire or theft. An external drive is in the bank safe deposit box for the same reasons, which gets updated every month or so.

I no longer use Seagates because they have a limited life span. I had 2 fail at the same time & research confirmed that was when it was supposed to happen. I lost some files but nothing irreplaceable.  The Western Digital MyBooks have proven more reliable. Their MyPassports not so much.

Using the cloud is another possibility but the recent ransomeware attacks have convinced me this is not the ultimate solution.

Is this annoying & time-consuming? Yes & yes, but I consider it a necessity.

To err is human. It takes a computer to REALLY foul things up.

Um...

Um,

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/hackers-exploited-0-day-not-2018-bug-to-mass-wipe-my-book-live-devices/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2021/06/27/a-mysterious-cyberattack-is-completely-erasing-western-digital-mybook-live-drives/?sh=52cc6de31187

https://www.engadget.com/western-digital-my-book-live-factory-reset-two-vulnerabilities-044122712.html

Personally and professionally have relied on Seagate (mainly Barracudas)
in Digital Media, Audio Post, and Video production for over 25 years,
had far more pain with WDs (incompatibility, data loss, intolerable performance degradation),
over the same period than I care to recall... *

Completely agree with the underlying sentiment though,
if it's important, then there is No Such Thing as "Too Many Backups"...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Backup Everything,
Prof Klyzlr

* the E.W.P.t.R. was the WD Velociraptors, which gave seek-time performance in multichannel digital audio applications which Seagate SATA HDDs couldn't match in the early-SATA/pre-SSD/DELL Precision 3x0 workstation era...
 

The tough part

is I have kept three copies of everything important.  That dropped to two last year when my laptop decided to quit working.  I haven't bought a new laptop since my company bought me one to work on during the pandemic, but I can't back up personal files to my work computer, so I've been mulling getting another portable backup for a bit.  Then my main computer's hard drive (Solid State) goofed its boot sectors and for some odd reason, I couldn't recover any files from it, so down to one drive - the Western Digital MyBook Live.  I bought the NAS a couple weeks ago to quickly build up my backup, but this is when I discovered the empty folders of all my MRH media (including the data backup I did on my laptop a couple years ago).  

I guess I'm just baffled why the only files that seem to be missing are the MRH files.  I almost wonder if they are there but some security setting won't let me see them.  But maybe the backup DVD's would be fine.  I do still have a DVD player/burner so that might be the simplest solution.

Joe

do the DVDs come with the Bonus extra as well, or just the magazines?

Magazines only

Just the magazines, there's not enough space on the data DVDs for bonus materials as well. Each issue the bonus materials can be 1GB or more, and a data DVD will only hold about 4.5GB.

So JUST the magazines.

Just what I do.

First of all. I am not trying to "not sell" JoeF's offer. However, to give some insight as to what I've done for years now. Back up everything off line. First, it was CD's, then DVD's, currently flash drives. The mention of SD's is also good. Finally, I use a laptop to back up "everything related to MR". And when using the laptop, it's "almost never online". Meaning I go online with the laptop only to update Windows or such. So the laptop is my backup instead of fancy HD's or external drives. The flash drives are nice, and very easy to use. But as with discs and such, may not be around 10 years from now. Remember "floppies". Or 3x3 cards? Or even the earlier 8" squares. Or were those floppies? Anyway. Get in the habit of saving everything in more than one or even two places. One final thought. I do that with 99% of the paper documents I have. Scan them. Save them on the desktop, the laptop, the flash drives. Sound like a lot of work. YES. But worth it. Saves from what happened to skiloff.

Addendum!

I forgot to mention. When I go online to download MRH & MRH-RE. (and yes, I like to grab the free version first and read it. the RE comes a day later.) I download first to the flash drive. And then do a second download to the HD. And when "opening" the "pdf's", I use both Foxit and Sumatra. Just to be sure I have good downloads. After a month or so, I go back and delete the free MRH, and keep the paid MRH-RE. But as I said, it's now in 3 locations. Pretty hard to mess up all 3. Especially since only the Desktop is online.

My hunch

proved correct.  The files are all still there, they are just not visible on the Win10 computers I have.  I pulled out an old XP computer and low and behold, they are all visible, so I'm copying them from the Win XP machine.  I'm curious if they will show up or copy onto the NAS.

I know there are a few tech people out there - is there a security issue/setting with the PDFs in Win10 that it wouldn't allow me to see them?  Is there a way I can change the setting?

Since they are on a NAS...

Does that NAS have an IP address? SMB networking has changed quite a bit over the past 20 years, including moving from a non-IP to a required IP scheme as the default.

Do the Win10 boxes even see the NAS as a device? It may require additional configuration, or simply re-attaching the drives on it to the computers.

Edit: read the edit to the original post so it would seem they did. This sounds like a permissions thing at this point. Perhaps the Win10 box needs to take "ownership" of the drive/folders/files?

Just to be clear

The files are stored on a WD MyBook Live that I've had for 8 or 9 years.  It is when trying to copy the files off this drive that I discovered the folders were showing as empty on both Win10 boxes.  I fired up the old XP box that has been only used for programming locos for the last few years, and boom, there they all were, though I got a security warning when trying to open one that the file could be "dangerous."  I'm wondering if the setting is in Win10 that doesn't give me the warning, it just makes them invisible.  

The big test will come, though, when I copy them over to the NAS.  Will the Win10 boxes see them on the NAS, or will they still be invisible on the Win10 machines?  I'm even curious if they will be "seen" on the portable drive I'm using to copy them over.  

So

I've copied everything over to the NAS from the WinXP laptop and I can view all the MRH PDFs on the NAS.  Must be a setting on the MyBook Live or something.  I'm not going to concern myself with it as I have (almost) everything back.  It appears I didn't backup a few issues of RE in 2018 so I'll have to go back and get those issues, but everything else (including the extras) are there.  

What this has shown, though, is I'm glad I bought the NAS as now I have automatic redundancy.  I've had too many hard drives fail over the last couple years to get caught again.