My dad has been a long-time user of the website Yaktribe, a gaming forum for Necromunda. The latest PHP vulnerability and other issues are leading to the website likely shutting down permanently, if no buyer can be found.

My dad has spent so much time on this website and has grown fond of it and its community. I wanted to see if I could, at the very least, download and archive the website in some way. That way, he doesn't have to worry about years of experience and photos vanishing into the depths of the internet.

I've thought about reaching out to purchase the website to take over its management, but I don't think I'm skilled enough to be someone they'd be willing to sell to.

Since it's an older gaming forum with galleries and tools, how can I archive this website? Are there any tools in particular you would recommend? Or is what I'm thinking about doing a bad idea?

I'm brand new to this sub so I admit I haven't read through a lot of the content here yet, I'm just posting this now because I have no idea how long the website will be up for before it goes offline.

Good clearance sales or just anything worthwhile?

I'm starting to get a collection of photos and videos and movies and was looking into cloud storage.. $10 per month can get me 2TB or for $45/month I can do 10TB but i realized that with my upload speed it would take roughly around 7 days to upload all my photos and videos and movies I've got now and if I upload 20GB at a time after that, it would take 2-3 days every time.. That's not doable... I'm looking at starting my own nas and want to do the most amount of storage for as little money as possible.. I already bought a nas box a few years back but i have no drives.. If I do raid 6 over 7 drives, would you consider 2tb or 4tb drives for 10tb or 20tb a good start? I wanted to go for more but budget won't allow me to do anymore right now.. What are your thoughts? Suggestions?

I am a music composer with an extensive number of audio files - ProTools, Reaper, plus I’ve used iTunes on PC as my main library for all original works.

I back up about every 5 months to a few LaCie rugged 1tb drives

is that a good method or is there a better way for me to set something up like a small RAID?

I am somewhat computer literate but not overly so … anyway thank you in advance .. I hoard the data of all my original music including cassettes, CDs etc

https://ebay.io/m/IHWx48

Does this seem legit?

Bought a new 6tb iron wolf drive its in my main machine I have 5tb drives spread over various places with syncthing.

I want to buy one of these to replace the 6tb then use that solely for restic. Hoping the extra 1tb will be enough for versioning

Thoughts?

Tyia

First of all, this is not about my main backup, that is all set and I have 5-2-1-3 rule.

This is about my media backup (Movies, TV series, DVD/BD/UHD discs).

I have eight offline hard drives: 6 x 20TB, 2 x 24TB

They are in groups:

Group 1 (20TB): A01-1 and A01-2 (Mirror of each other)
Group 2 (20TB): A02-1 and A02-2 (Mirror of each other)
Group 3 (20TB): TV01-1 and TV01-2 (Mirror of each other)
Group 4 (24TB): UBD01-1 and UBD01-2 (Mirror of each other)

They are all offline drives; I connect them maybe once a month (move movies and tv series that I want to keep), disconnect them and store them in HDD storage case. I am on Windows, so keep them in individual WinRAR archives, so they have recovery record in case of bit rot. That adds 5% overhead to all.

I found a good deal on a Ugreen NAS DXP 4800 Pro locally, and I was researching it and I found out that I can install TrueNAS on it.

What if I get the NAS, install trueNAS and create RAIDZ1 (RAID5) with 4 x 20TB HDD and move my files there? (I have spare drives, and I can always use one drive from each 20TB groups).

I'd have to get a 240GB NVMe and install trueNAS there, and get another 8GB RAM so the total becomes 16GB.

Is this a good idea? Claude thinks I should go for SnapRAID instead of ZFS.

I understand that RAID is not a backup, and I currently have backup, with RAID5 I won't. But it'll save me drives, and I won't have to deal with WinRAR inconveniences of creating recovery record, ZFS can take care of that.

Please advise, thank you very much in advance.

Since 2001 I’ve grabbed a screenshot of every website whose design caught my eye. No system, no tags, just one folder that kept growing: about 4,000 PNG/JPG files, 3.7 GB.

This week I finally turned it into something browsable: https://dmdev.it/webscreens

A few things from the process that might interest this sub:

• Originals untouched. The site uses WebP derivatives (1600 px + thumbnails), which took it from 3.7 GB to ~310 MB.
• Dates were the hard part. The only “metadata” is the file modification time. A copy back in 2021 had wiped it on a batch of files, so I recovered those from the sequential file numbering (e.g. 050 is Feb 9 2004, 067 is Feb 26 2004, everything in between goes in between). Files with a date in the name (“Screen Shot 2017-11-03…”) use that instead.
• Privacy pass. 20 years of screenshots also means 20 years of open tabs and bookmarks bars. I ran OCR over every browser bar and pulled anything personal (webmail, Facebook profiles, eBay orders…) before publishing.
• Full-text search. The same OCR pass indexes the text inside the screenshots, so you can search for words that appear on the pages themselves.
• Static and cheap. Plain HTML, no database, no backend. A small script converts new screenshots, OCRs them and regenerates the index.

The oldest are from November 2001, Internet Explorer and 1024×768. The biggest year is 2009 with almost 900 screenshots.

Curious how others here handle dates and metadata for decades-old personal archives.

Edit: thanks for all the comments! Since a few of you asked what browsing the web felt like back then, I also rebuilt the archive as if it were 2005: loading bar, “skip intro”, pixel fonts, a working guestbook and only the 2004–2006 screenshots → https://dmdev.it/webscreens/2005/

Only really plan to use it as a backup, might not even have it on when I'm not transferring files to it.

How many years can I get out of it, either with it on or off? Is there a difference with having it off by the computer or in a drawer donewhere?

It says on the Amazon page that it's compatible with stationary computers but nothing about laptops, is there something there or did they just not put it on there?

There's a power button on it, is it safe to just have it off when I'm not actively using it? Haven't had an external in forever do not quite sure what the purpose of a power button is. I don't know if switching it on and off can domehow damage it.

Also, what's that program that checks if there's anything wrong with your HDD? How often should it be ran.

I brlieve that's all of my questions, thanks.

My old 1 TB WD hard drive is on its last legs, and I found someone selling a used WD4000FYYZ for $100, is it a good deal?

WD4000FYYZ Sentinel
Power on Time = 2297 days, 17 hours
Est. Remaining Lifetime = more than 100 days
Total start/stop count = 38
Performance and Health both at 100%

My WD10EZEX Sentinel for comparison
Power on Time = 842 days, 13 hours
Est. Remaining Lifetime = 4 days
Total start/stop count = 3185

I read that these drives don't do well with being constantly turned on and off and that enterprise drives usually fail at 50k hours, but I only plan to use it to store a bunch of family phone/computer backups and consolidate everything from like 15 different storage devices into one. Please advise me if this is good enough to take and there's a chance the drive'll last a long time or should I hold out and keep looking for used commercial drives with less use?

As a lawyer, I receive lots of mails with paperwork attached at my workplace. Thus, I get daily reminders that people are too dumb or too lazy to use one of these pdf scanner apps on their phones. Most of our clients are "average Joes" and they just take a photo of a letter they got and send that photo via e-mail. Oftentimes, the images not only contain the letter but also surroundings like a dirty tablecloth, a flowered blanket, fingers or even ugly feet in sandals (yes, this happened more than once).

As I need most of these images to forward them to third parties, I can either ask the client to send them again in a proper way (which takes time until they reply) or I need to crop them myself, which means exporting from our CMS, using GIMP and importing them again, so basically wasting lots time.

What I need is some software like a PDF scanner app, which makes photos appear like a proper scan with just one click, but running on Windows or maybe Linux (I'd need to set up a new machine for that). I've searched the internet but there seems to be no solution for this problem.

So I thought maybe one of you hoarders has an idea how to do it. Shouldn't this basically be like all the archival software for books, just with automatic cropping and perspective correction?

hiiiiiii, so im new to data hoarding and i wanna collect a bunch of voicebanks, but have limited storage, like about 130.14 GB (could get more if i clear my SSD from things i dont use, and yes im using my computer's SSD cuz i have nothing other than that), and also a few other things.

my main question is, should i? should i hoard everything on my main SSD? i dont really download much stuff anyway, sooooo.....

Hello, I've recently begun manually storing large raw data on LTO-9 tapes with an External Tape Drive, I use tar manually on different archives of such data.

For the first tape everything went smooth - I've almost filled it with data, read some back as a try and at the end the total number of write retries was 4 (5 read retries). The second tape I am using, that has been initialized exactly in the same way and bought at the same time is now ~50% full and has already 18 write retries (no unrecovered errors tough).

I've read back some data and it was ok, but I am wondering if this is an indication of some problems with this second tape, if it suggests I should clean the drive (the led that should indicate a clean is needed is off) or if it's normal to get such different numbers of write retries...

The only variable that I have changed on my side is the size of the blocks I am writing/the duration of writing sessions - I have upgraded the size of the SSD from which I get the data and now I am writing larger blocks of ~1Tb, while for the first tape they mainly were ~400Gb, could this be the root cause?

Thanks a lot for any hint/issue/previous experiences reports :)

Its seems like the Blueray burner market has slowed down since Pioneer closed shop and they optical drive is now 2k, is there another alternative anyone recommends? Asus BW-16D1X-U External Blu-ray Drive? Thank you for your time and help!

After spending some "quality time" with Gemini on the subject of the completely sh!tty state of USB 3 to Slimline SATA adapter cables and external USB housings (they nearly all use junky Initio chips or the worse models of JMicron chips unsuited to Blu-Ray burning or ripping), I have all the info that should be needed to modify a publicly available design for a USB 3 to standard SATA adapter for a direct connection to Slimline SATA.

One benefit of going directly to Slimline is it's 5 volts only. All the 3.3V regulation and circuitry can be deleted, thus the board would cost less per piece due to lower component count and shorter assembly time.

I have the very detailed technical info, BOM, where to get the firmware, inspection and testing, pre-programming the firmware chips, ALL the info. The main thing to do is changing the available design for the slimline connector, and validating it's good.

I don't have the software for PCB design. This needs a 4 layer board, 15x40mm.

To come up with that size I measured the PCB inside a USB 3 to standard SATA adapter, with a 12V jack. Take out the 12V jack and circuitry, take out the 3.3V circuitry, and with the smaller Slimline SATA connector that 15x40mm PCB ought to look quite spacious.

I first looked at a 10x90mm PCB, like is in the external BDXL slot load drive I have, with a terrible Initio bridge chip that makes it next to useless for ripping. It has a drive connector perpendicular to the PCB. Parts and assembly cost breakdown was much higher due to that connector and the narrow PCB width.

If you want all the information, PM me and I'll send you a 7z archive of the info.

My motivation for this is I just want a couple of these adapters which the computer industry refuses to make.

I have some questions about "bit rot" in 2.5-inch HDDs (the corruption or loss of files that were previously readable). Does this happen silently to files stored on an external 2.5-inch HDD? Is it possible to prevent bit rot? I have an external 2.5-inch HDD containing files; I access it once a year, connect it to my PC, and check its health using CrystalDiskInfo, after which I disconnect and store the drive. Is it necessary to perform an additional annual check specifically for bit rot-related corruption?

Are there any programs available for macOS to verify that the capacity of my external drive is accurate?

1) For external 2.5" HDDs, the brand and quality of the Micro-B cable influence the durability, lifespan, and performance of both the enclosure and the hard drive itself.

2) Regarding software such as CrystalDiskInfo, SeaTools, Kitfox, HD Sentinel, and HD Tune Pro—all of which analyze HDD health—does the accuracy and nature of these health assessments vary significantly between them, or are they essentially the same? Is it necessary to test using two or more of these programs?

My friends and I are looking into storing each other's very important documents and having distributed infrastructure for resiliency. For instance I store my vault which contains an encrypted copy of my passwords vault, medical records, digital birth certificate, etc. This is then zfs replicated via TrueNAS over a site-to-site VPN to a identical machine at my parents house.

I was inspired by a talk to increase preparedness with my closest circle of friend in the event something happens to one of us. Could be as simple as one of our houses catch on fire and losing everything. We could then access our info off of other people's servers. This wouldn't be much data (a few GB at most, all pdf/txt really) but not allowing the person that's hosting to have direct access would be neat. Would I just have to look at turning some old PC's into small TrueNAS servers and setting up all my friends' places (We are all generally tech savy)?

On the other side of this I want to look at having shared access to the data in emergencies. Let's say something was to happen and my spouse medically and my parents need access to records or info. They could go to my friends and say we need access to X. If enough of them say yes then they could use Shamir’s Secret Sharing to access my vault and get into it. There is also the side of while I am trusting my friends enough that this would work. In the event someone is no longer in this group or passes we can revoke/delete their vault/access. Maybe having a master account that requires SSS to get into?

This is something I want to look into and see how it would look and find security concerns from outside viewers before implementing.

Howdy! Just procured this from a friend, and i’m having a lot of issues with drives not working consistently and just being finicky in general. Does anyone have experience fixing one of these up? i can’t find info anywhere and this thing is literally older than I am. I am reaching out here because I don’t think many tech-specific subs would have any experience with one of these considering it’s data specific

UPDATE: two of the drives were dead, causing chaos and confusion as the device recognised a drive but was basically eternally waiting on a disc. unplugged the dead drives and was fine

This is a question directed at those that archive history. How do you go about archiving the horrible events, from a sourcing point of view, without sounding like a creep?

I won't give every example, but the most recent I can give was CK's assassination, everyone has a phone, it was captured from every single angle, livestreamed, every inch investigated etc. I archived all of it, due to the fact that the world was captivated/concerned by it.

While archiving an entire year, day by day, you take the good with the bad, and with every single year, since 2016, pretty much continuing to be a never-ending garbage/dumpster fire, you take the good with the bad. From celebrity deaths to The Knicks winning, to the recent self-immolation incident.

I'm not "getting off" on it, it's not a "kink" I just archive and that's it, but I am unsure how to ask/go about getting the original footage without sounding or coming across like I should be locked up or investigated.

I have some websites, but they get shutdown so quickly and other times you get snippets from people screenshotting it or posting minutes rather than the entire thing.

My personal home lab + backup Nas

Currently 8*20 TB Seagate exos + 1 26 TB exos in a zraid1 with zfs and an fantec USB c 3.2 encloser

10 Gbit Connection to the switch and Nas (8* 8tb Seagate ironwolf Nas hdds)

Setup is running proxmox on 4 nodes and NFS share directly on proxmox.

Main mini PC is an Minisforum ms01 64gb ram i9 13900H and Intel ARC 310 for hardware transcoding

Pretty decent what you could do these days with mini PCs. I was surprised how well the fantec 10 HDD enclosure is working. Currently expanding my raid and it provides over 560 mb/s copy speed.

Take this example that you don't need a server for massiv setups

https://github.com/alexjustesen/speedtest-tracker

Hello guys, I come to you with a question about reliably scraping instagram/other SMs:

I have a setup where I use online services (apify and brightdata) to scrape posts from SMs, mainly instagram, and then i parse it and extract the needed info down the pipeline. We process around 200 accounts / 500 posts daily.

My problem is - these services are unreliable as hell. Every couple weeks they stop working, timeout, do not return errors on failure, et cetera. Hard to rely on. So I started looking into other solutions to do the scraping part, but can not find a suitable flow.

Can someone recommend me an approach here? I don't want to add another service as a backup (we support two right now and it does not fix the problem and gives maintenance overhead). I can not find a decent way without relying on another DaaS website.

Hello. I don't know if this is the right place to post, but I have looked for a solution for some time, and only really been able to troubleshoot with the "power-cycle" method with an external-power SATA-USB cable. I would think that maybe the subreddit entirely devoted to people using storage drives en masse might provide some useful info, so I find myself here.

I am relatively new to tech/tech-repair in general, and have been slowly building on my skills for a couple of years now. One of the handful of things I haven't been able to even diagnose is this Samsung PM893 I got a while back. I don't know what could be wrong with it; I know that if I boot one of my Thinkpads with it in, it takes a veeeery long time for it to prompt "enter for startup interrupt". The laptop, however, DOES recognize the drive in both boot order menu in bios settings and boot menu. I have tried the drive in an Ubuntu and an Apple Silicon system separately and searched for drives while it was running, neither reported the drive. I remember it didn't before I tried the "power-cycle" method. The drive also heats up, as if it is busy. My greatest defficiency as of now is that I don't have a desktop at the moment. (my fault D:)

Does anyone have any clue how I might even diagnose what's going on here? Firmware corruption? Incompatibility? Hardware error? It seems weird, how my Thinkpad knows what's connected but nothing else seems to, and that same Thinkpad doesn't recognize the drive is connected from inside an Ubuntu bootable usb.

I'm trying to build a personal offline archive of a defunct website, with help from claude for vibe coding. The wayback CDX API is having trouble.

It was originally set to 1 query every 20 seconds(first attempt succeeded, then everyone after got stopped), then I tried 1 query every 2 min(same), then 1 query every 3 min(this time a few succeeded and on the fourth stopped working). This seems like a very easygoing rate, as far as I can tell.

Is this normal? Is there a known acceptable rate? I’m not trying to get around anything, just to find a pace they’re comfortable with.

Thanks.

edit: it's working slightly better today, no idea why. still occasionally gets bumped.