Instead of having to do an Operating system setup with a cloud provider, maybe another cloud backup service would work. Something like Backblaze can receive your Google files. Then you can download from Backblaze at your leisure.
https://help.goodsync.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003419711-Backblaze-B2
Or use the filters by date to limit the amount of takeout data that’s created? Then repeat with different filters for the next chunk.
Used servers/workstations are likely more reliable than new consumer.
They were very likely kept temperature controlled, have ECC, and are actually known working instead of something like Asus. If I remember correctly, PC mortality is very high the first 6 months, goes down to near zero for 5 years, then starts going back up.
Replace the SSD/hard drive and you are good. You might not even have to do that. I checked the stats on the SSD that came with my used Lenovo workstation and it had like 20 hours on it.
Smaller doesn’t need to be more complex. 3.5" drives weren’t more complex than 5.25" drives.
A smaller head means a smaller drive actuator. Less mass and smaller size means it can compensate much quicker in response to vibration detection.
Back when full height 5.25" drives were the norm, you couldn’t pick up your PC while running without causing an error. Those tiny CF card sized drives failed but took extreme abuse compared to big drives.
The AsRock says ECC but not verified with Ryzen.
So you end up having to test it yourself like this guy and hope the version hasn’t changed between when he bought the motherboard and now.
Plex, Blue Iris, Minecraft mod servers for the kids. I’ll often use the server CPU for video filtering/encoding home videos off of VHS tapes because the nnedi3 filter takes a lot of CPU.
Years ago I lost data on a nas because the ram wasn’t ECC. So I won’t buy/build any PC without ECC unless it’s only going to be used for web browsing/gaming.
Harvey Weinstein is 71. As soon as he’s dead, Kevin Smith will buy the rights and you’ll be able to buy it.
Thanks for reminding me I need to try mdisc. I have multiple redundant backups but don’t trust any of them for long term. (Hard drive, SSD flash, USB flash)
My carefully burned DVDs are going bad after 15 years just like you said. (They were checked for pio errors at time of burn using only verbatim azzo 100 year media and stored in my basement in black dvd cases.)
transforms the successor in such a way that the end result is still what the author of the successor intended.
It says that it supports multiple but how would that actually work for more than 2?
You have 3 people who see the word two in a list and each want to add their item as 3rd in the list because it is a todo list and its place in the list is important. Appending based on previous position isn’t what they intended (contrasted with the example given where it was their intent).
You might want to go down the rabbit hole of virtualdub2 and avisynth. Virtualdub provides a GUI for very simple editing but its main focus is encoding. Avisynth allows you to work with video files with scripts. The most advanced filters for improving quality are on avisynth. You can create a .avs script in notepad and then view it in Virtualdub as if its a video file.
You can start with just Virtualdub2. Use its built in deinterlacing filters (because those DVD’s are interlaced), resize filters (because the files on a DVD aren’t the correct aspect ratio) and video/audio compression. For X264, use quality based encoding at something like Q18 for almost perfect quality.
Trek DVD’s are particularly hard because they are a mix of film source and TV special effects so you need a dynamic deinterlacer that can switch between 3:2 pulldown for film parts (live action) and straight deinterlacing for special effects (space battles).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-two_pull_down#:~:text=Three-two pull down (3,of%20transferring%20film%20to%20video.&text=It%20converts%2024%20frames%20per,slight%20slow%20down%20in%20speed.
If you sell a digital copy you can keep selling that digital copy because you do not necessarily give it away or delete it.
Steam and other DRM systems ensure that copies cannot be played. Yet you can’t sell your Steam games. It is my understanding that in the EU, you can sell your Steam games. So there is no legitimate reason you can’t sell digital goods.
You might want to consider that backups only protect very old data from ransomware.
Ransomware works by getting on a machine and sitting for several months before activating. During that time, your data is encrypted but you don’t know because when you open a file, your computer decrypts it and shows you what you expect to see. So your backups are working but are saving files that will be lost once the ransom ware activates.
The only solution is to frequently manually verify the backup from a known safe computer. Years ago I looked for something to automate this but didn’t find it. (Something like a raspberry pi with no Internet that can only see the PC it’s testing, compares a known file, then touches the file so it gets backed up again.)