OT: Best Free Email (POP Only)

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:

On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

So with that in mind, you could do far worse than a gmail account -
it is reliable, easy to use, works fine with IMAP, and has a workable
web interface for when you need it.

I use Rackspace, which I'm pretty happy with. AFAICT they don't spy on
my mail to sell me stuff, either. I also have them automatically
forward all my mail to another separate hosting company, so that I
automatically have failover.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 09 Nov 2014 13:35:10 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

So with that in mind, you could do far worse than a gmail account -
it is reliable, easy to use, works fine with IMAP, and has a workable
web interface for when you need it.

I use Rackspace, which I'm pretty happy with. AFAICT they don't spy on
my mail to sell me stuff, either. I also have them automatically
forward all my mail to another separate hosting company, so that I
automatically have failover.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have gmail up and running... perfectly fine for my needs...
circumvents Cox' spam filtering.

I _was_ running POP from Cox, now from gmail, no big deal. As for
confusing copies, I don't have that problem... my son Aaron wrote me a
handler that forwards to my cell when I'm traveling, replies go back
thru my PC, then outbound... the PC does the housekeeping, filing
everything in its appropriate mailbox/folder.

Of course I'm running the most modern Email client ever... Eudora Pro
v7.1.0.9 (paid mode, so I still have all those nice filtering
mechanisms operational >:-}

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[rickman]

On 11/9/2014 6:10 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 09 Nov 2014 13:35:10 -0500, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

So with that in mind, you could do far worse than a gmail account -
it is reliable, easy to use, works fine with IMAP, and has a workable
web interface for when you need it.

I use Rackspace, which I'm pretty happy with. AFAICT they don't spy on
my mail to sell me stuff, either. I also have them automatically
forward all my mail to another separate hosting company, so that I
automatically have failover.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have gmail up and running... perfectly fine for my needs...
circumvents Cox' spam filtering.

I _was_ running POP from Cox, now from gmail, no big deal. As for
confusing copies, I don't have that problem... my son Aaron wrote me a
handler that forwards to my cell when I'm traveling, replies go back
thru my PC, then outbound... the PC does the housekeeping, filing
everything in its appropriate mailbox/folder.

Of course I'm running the most modern Email client ever... Eudora Pro
v7.1.0.9 (paid mode, so I still have all those nice filtering
mechanisms operational >:-}

I offered you hosting that would include all the email you want and
someone else asked about the email you get with your hosted URL. Why do
you feel the need for a third party email service? Why not use the
email that is part of your web site hosting? I see you have email set
up through websiteinquiry@analog-innovations.com. Why not use
analog-innovations.com for all your email?

--

Rick

 

[rickman]

On 11/9/2014 6:10 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:

Of course I'm running the most modern Email client ever... Eudora Pro
v7.1.0.9 (paid mode, so I still have all those nice filtering
mechanisms operational >:-}

Shoot, I missed the most important part. I have been using Eudora for
nearly 20 years now. Well, as long as I can remember anyway. Even
though the bug fixes have stopped, bug additions are also absent and I
think that is a more than fair tradeoff. If I start using Linux, I'm
not sure what I will do. Maybe Eudora will run under WINE.

--

Rick

 

[David Brown]

On 09/11/14 19:35, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.

You only need to get it wrong once to screw your whole setup. You set
up client 1 to collect by POP but leave the messages on the server. You
set up client 2 the same, and you've got the messages on both. You set
up client 3, but forget to set the "leave messages on server" box before
you start, and they are gone from the server.

But more importantly, using POP3 like this only works if you have a
small number of messages, no structure (such as folders), no interest in
tracking outgoing emails, and are happy to "read" the same email on
every client. It was perhaps not too bad a decade ago, but when you
have had an email account under heavy use for some years, you want
something better. And when you have multiple clients (such as a
telephone, a pad, a couple of desktops, a laptop - plus webmail clients)
with the same email account, you want them synchronised and the
incoming, archived and sent emails all available.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

You can backup your local copies of IMAP mails without trouble. A
decent desktop email client will happily let you download folders for
"offline use" - then you save the folders in whatever backup system you
want. For more sophisticated backup, use imapsync to make copies
(including updating old backups, rather than downloading everything
again) - and you can serve out these downloaded copies using an IMAP
server so that your backup copies are conveniently accessible.

Of course, the best idea is to make sure the server has good backups and
replication, such as by using a solid server company or doing your own
imap serving.

So with that in mind, you could do far worse than a gmail account -
it is reliable, easy to use, works fine with IMAP, and has a workable
web interface for when you need it.

I use Rackspace, which I'm pretty happy with. AFAICT they don't spy on
my mail to sell me stuff, either. I also have them automatically
forward all my mail to another separate hosting company, so that I
automatically have failover.

<http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/rackspace-email-imap-vs-pop>

"We at Rackspace Strongly recommend using an IMAP connection with
Rackspace Email"

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/10/2014 4:36 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 09/11/14 19:35, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.


You only need to get it wrong once to screw your whole setup. You set
up client 1 to collect by POP but leave the messages on the server. You
set up client 2 the same, and you've got the messages on both. You set
up client 3, but forget to set the "leave messages on server" box before
you start, and they are gone from the server.

But more importantly, using POP3 like this only works if you have a
small number of messages, no structure (such as folders), no interest in
tracking outgoing emails, and are happy to "read" the same email on
every client. It was perhaps not too bad a decade ago, but when you
have had an email account under heavy use for some years, you want
something better. And when you have multiple clients (such as a
telephone, a pad, a couple of desktops, a laptop - plus webmail clients)
with the same email account, you want them synchronised and the
incoming, archived and sent emails all available.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

You can backup your local copies of IMAP mails without trouble. A
decent desktop email client will happily let you download folders for
"offline use" - then you save the folders in whatever backup system you
want. For more sophisticated backup, use imapsync to make copies
(including updating old backups, rather than downloading everything
again) - and you can serve out these downloaded copies using an IMAP
server so that your backup copies are conveniently accessible.

Of course, the best idea is to make sure the server has good backups and
replication, such as by using a solid server company or doing your own
imap serving.

That's way too much like work. I just turn off deletion on the server,
and use POP3 everyplace. Knowing when I last read my mail takes care of
the multiple new messages problem, so it isn't an issue.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[David Brown]

On 10/11/14 13:27, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 11/10/2014 4:36 AM, David Brown wrote:
On 09/11/14 19:35, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.


You only need to get it wrong once to screw your whole setup. You set
up client 1 to collect by POP but leave the messages on the server. You
set up client 2 the same, and you've got the messages on both. You set
up client 3, but forget to set the "leave messages on server" box before
you start, and they are gone from the server.

But more importantly, using POP3 like this only works if you have a
small number of messages, no structure (such as folders), no interest in
tracking outgoing emails, and are happy to "read" the same email on
every client. It was perhaps not too bad a decade ago, but when you
have had an email account under heavy use for some years, you want
something better. And when you have multiple clients (such as a
telephone, a pad, a couple of desktops, a laptop - plus webmail clients)
with the same email account, you want them synchronised and the
incoming, archived and sent emails all available.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

You can backup your local copies of IMAP mails without trouble. A
decent desktop email client will happily let you download folders for
"offline use" - then you save the folders in whatever backup system you
want. For more sophisticated backup, use imapsync to make copies
(including updating old backups, rather than downloading everything
again) - and you can serve out these downloaded copies using an IMAP
server so that your backup copies are conveniently accessible.

Of course, the best idea is to make sure the server has good backups and
replication, such as by using a solid server company or doing your own
imap serving.

That's way too much like work. I just turn off deletion on the server,
and use POP3 everyplace. Knowing when I last read my mail takes care of
the multiple new messages problem, so it isn't an issue.

Registering a gmail account, then connecting by imap is not a great deal
of work. It is far less work than messing around with pop3 backups - it
is even less work than remembering to disable server deletion on pop3.
And if you prefer Rackspace to gmail, using imap is not exactly rocket
science there either. The hosting company will handle the backups.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 10/11/14 13:27, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/10/2014 4:36 AM, David Brown wrote:
On 09/11/14 19:35, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/8/2014 3:46 PM, David Brown wrote:
On 08/11/14 17:19, Jim Thompson wrote:
Cox is driving me nuts with their nanny-state behavior...

Their Spam trap only allows options on where to send the spam
after it's marked... no way to opt out of any marking... so just
about everything I receive is marked "-- Spam --" :-(

So I'm looking for a free Email service that I can forward Email
to from my website, then POP it to me.

Some service that won't stick ads into incoming mail.

Recommendations?


Why POP? The only use of POP is in fetchmail scripts to then pass on
the mail to a proper mailserver (as an alternative to setting up a
mailserver that will receive the mail directly). POP is a hopeless
choice if you are using a mail client - with normal setups, the
single client pulls everything off the server.

Only if you set it up wrong. Plus most mail hosting outfits let you
turn that off at the server. Even Gmail.


You only need to get it wrong once to screw your whole setup. You set
up client 1 to collect by POP but leave the messages on the server. You
set up client 2 the same, and you've got the messages on both. You set
up client 3, but forget to set the "leave messages on server" box before
you start, and they are gone from the server.

But more importantly, using POP3 like this only works if you have a
small number of messages, no structure (such as folders), no interest in
tracking outgoing emails, and are happy to "read" the same email on
every client. It was perhaps not too bad a decade ago, but when you
have had an email account under heavy use for some years, you want
something better. And when you have multiple clients (such as a
telephone, a pad, a couple of desktops, a laptop - plus webmail clients)
with the same email account, you want them synchronised and the
incoming, archived and sent emails all available.

That means you can only connect one machine to the account, and when
that machine fails or corrupts its mailfile, you have lost
everything. (You can, in theory, leave mail undeleted on the server
- but with POP that brings its own problems.)

I would /never/ recommend POP - use IMAP (or exchange, if you can't
avoid it).

You've got that exactly backwards. With POP, you can have N local
copies of everything. I have email backups going back into the 1980s,
from half a dozen email servers. Good luck doing that with IMAP.

You can backup your local copies of IMAP mails without trouble. A
decent desktop email client will happily let you download folders for
"offline use" - then you save the folders in whatever backup system you
want. For more sophisticated backup, use imapsync to make copies
(including updating old backups, rather than downloading everything
again) - and you can serve out these downloaded copies using an IMAP
server so that your backup copies are conveniently accessible.

Of course, the best idea is to make sure the server has good backups and
replication, such as by using a solid server company or doing your own
imap serving.

That's way too much like work. I just turn off deletion on the server,
and use POP3 everyplace. Knowing when I last read my mail takes care of
the multiple new messages problem, so it isn't an issue.


Registering a gmail account, then connecting by imap is not a great deal
of work. It is far less work than messing around with pop3 backups - it
is even less work than remembering to disable server deletion on pop3.
And if you prefer Rackspace to gmail, using imap is not exactly rocket
science there either. The hosting company will handle the backups.

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

I certainly wouldn't have folders on gmail. What I have is all
mailbox/folder sorting done at my local PC.

I'm rather extreme >:-} but I have several hundred E-mail addresses
via my website, which forward to two on gmail, from whence I retrieve
them with Eudora, which sorts them into the appropriate location.

Outbound I simply use Cox... they (so far) don't screw with outbound
E-mail (as long as you're not running a list server).

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> Gave us:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.

Even better would be to use a full RAID system with 5 or more drives,
and you could do your backups onto mSATA SSDs, which take up about 1
40th the volume of a 3.5 inch platter based drive, AND they are way
faster too.

At the end of it, you have a bunch of really good SSDs to fashion your
next RAID array out of. Eventually, you'll have a RAID array wherever
you keep or generate sensitive data, and you would eventually make you
back ups onto RAID arrays as well. Get a nice, deep floor safe
(installed into a slab) and you do not have to worry about "off site"
requisites any more either. The drive form factors allow easy use of
the safe. No more lugging drives from place to place.

Smaller SSDs are cheaper, so a RAID array of them is a cheaper build,
and results in a more reliable data store, AND it works nearly an order
of magnitude faster, so even makes all those SPICE guys happy, even
though they do not know where the bottleneck is in that process either..

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/10/2014 12:02 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.


I have a couple of 3-TB RAID-5 NAS boxes, one at the lab and one at home.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.

But DVD's and CD's don't die arbitrarily like USB drives... I had one
die on me last month. Fortunately it was just stuff of which I had
original copy.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:16:24 -0800, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
<DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> Gave us:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.


Even better would be to use a full RAID system with 5 or more drives,
and you could do your backups onto mSATA SSDs, which take up about 1
40th the volume of a 3.5 inch platter based drive, AND they are way
faster too.

All my three "work" PCs have front-panel hot-plug RAID drives. Never
had a failure. What's cool is that I can clone my work PC OS to my
home and cabin PCs easily. And I can occasionally drop off a full
drive as a spare/backup/checkpoint, with everything installed and
ready to run if needed.

At the end of it, you have a bunch of really good SSDs to fashion your
next RAID array out of. Eventually, you'll have a RAID array wherever
you keep or generate sensitive data, and you would eventually make you
back ups onto RAID arrays as well. Get a nice, deep floor safe
(installed into a slab) and you do not have to worry about "off site"
requisites any more either. The drive form factors allow easy use of
the safe. No more lugging drives from place to place.

Smaller SSDs are cheaper, so a RAID array of them is a cheaper build,
and results in a more reliable data store, AND it works nearly an order
of magnitude faster, so even makes all those SPICE guys happy, even
though they do not know where the bottleneck is in that process either..

I think my Spice runs are compute limited. Possibly slowed down by
logging sim data to disk. I'm seeing about 55% CPU load by LT Spice on
my switcher sim. So maybe a non-RAID SSD would help there, for temp
storage of the sim data.







--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 12:21:22 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 12:02 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.


I have a couple of 3-TB RAID-5 NAS boxes, one at the lab and one at home.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

We're cutting over from old klunky server boxes to tiny RAID NAS boxes
sitting on a shelf. Much easier.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 10:27:14 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.

But DVD's and CD's don't die arbitrarily like USB drives... I had one
die on me last month. Fortunately it was just stuff of which I had
original copy.

...Jim Thompson

My backup problem isn't losing copies, it's having too many!

We do multiple rolling hard-drive backups of all our official company
files. And once a month, it gets written to a metal-tube-O-ring USB
memory stick, with copies of that all over California.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/10/2014 12:41 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 12:21:22 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 12:02 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.


I have a couple of 3-TB RAID-5 NAS boxes, one at the lab and one at home.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

We're cutting over from old klunky server boxes to tiny RAID NAS boxes
sitting on a shelf. Much easier.

Mine are Synology DS411slim, which was recently discontinued but is
still in support. I basically just use it for local NetBIOS and remote
SSH/SFTP. The discs are HGST 1.5 TB 2.5-inch, and have been running for
six months or so, non-stop. I had one infant-mortality failure, but the
other seven have been working flawlessly (zero restarts on S.M.A.R.T).

I have both of them on IBM-rebadged APS SmartUPS 750 UPSes that I got on
eBay for about $50 each.

The NAS knows how to talk to the UPS to make sure it shuts down cleanly
in the event of a long power outage.

But I still take DVD images occasionally.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 10:27:14 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> Gave us:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:36:36 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:27:25 -0500, Phil Hobbs
hobbs@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 11/10/2014 7:53 AM, David Brown wrote:
[snip]

We agree that setting up email isn't very difficult, but we obviously
have very different philosophies of backing up stuff. As far as I'm
concerned, if it isn't backed up on discs that I can touch myself, it
isn't backed up. Server-side backup is a nice-to-have, for sure, but
Google can turn the lights out on Gmail any time it wants. I have
backups of my mail from two or three mail servers that no longer exist
(including some from VM mainframe days).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Back-up... I have everything on my local hard-drive _plus_
additionally written to CD's or DVD's.

Terabyte USB hard drives are under $100 nowadays. I back up my mail
daily, rotating backups, and monthly propagate that to my offsite PCs.

DVDs are so last century.

But DVD's and CD's don't die arbitrarily like USB drives...

No. They die specifically after aging, which they do too. Storing in
warm environs shortens that life and increases likelihood of data
dropout.

Burned discs are not burned holes, but mere polymer "impingements"
(impressions) which have enough contrast ratio over a flat area to be
called a bit switch (a pit). They are not pits. They can and do
"relax".

I had one
die on me last month. Fortunately it was just stuff of which I had
original copy.

You are correct. USB drives are lame inasmuch as when they fail, they
take the whole volume with them.

I use an mSATA drive in an enclosure and USB3 interface. Even in a
USB2 port, it blazes. And data loss is confined to the last file that
was open as the power loss happened type thing, just like real hard
drives.

That or the new M.2 variety. They are the true future. I will be
building an M.2 RAID array soon. Then no data loss even without a
backup.
Well... I'd have to lose three drives to lose data.


Anyway... direct USB stick is bad, yes.

HARD Drive in an enclosure, connected by USB is far better,and optical
is just plain out and has been for a long time. It takes forever to
back up TB of info. And at accelerated 'burn' speeds is even less
reliable.

M.2 is not much bigger than a couple 50s era Air Mail stamps.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3X73EE?psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-512GB-Internal-Solid-CT512M550SSD4/dp/B00ITFZTHC

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=M.2%20enclosure

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 10:10:08 -0800, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
<DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 10:27:14 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> Gave us:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:02:07 -0800, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
[snip]
DVDs are so last century.

But DVD's and CD's don't die arbitrarily like USB drives...

No. They die specifically after aging, which they do too. Storing in
warm environs shortens that life and increases likelihood of data
dropout.

Burned discs are not burned holes, but mere polymer "impingements"
(impressions) which have enough contrast ratio over a flat area to be
called a bit switch (a pit). They are not pits. They can and do
"relax".

I had one
die on me last month. Fortunately it was just stuff of which I had
original copy.

You are correct. USB drives are lame inasmuch as when they fail, they
take the whole volume with them.

[snip]

I live in an air-conditioned world with exceptionally low humidity,
and each CD/DVD is saved in its own container so they can't rub and
scratch... so I have CD's dating back decades that read just fine.

Some years ago, when I still had a 5-1/4" floppy drive that a PC knew
how to talk to, I copied all my really old stuff to CD's ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:38:53 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> Gave us:

Some years ago, when I still had a 5-1/4" floppy drive that a PC knew
how to talk to, I copied all my really old stuff to CD's ;-)

Good move, because floppies are notorious for becoming unreadable.
And it is usually the drive, not the disc. Picky read/reject/give-up
code. My 2.88 laser aligned floppies NEVER EVER lost a single bit of
data ever. Try to find a drive or motherboard BIOS with support though.
Near impossible. Sad too, since they were far superior. Got left
behind with other "overpriced" (by the mindset of the day) IBM PS2 type
"proprietary think" technology, just as they ushered in Iomega's triple
overpriced utter crap, which everyone embraced simply because of
capacity numbers. I still have 2.88 drives and discs and even an old
machine somewhere with the right BIOS. I think one can still buy a PCIs
I/O card with a floppy interface on it that carries it.

I wanted to backup my DesqViewX install floppy images, and was so
frustrated trying. Then I found the dang image set online! AND QEMM
386 too! Pretty sure even Bloggs could hunt up and DL a full set within
a few minutes online, if he wasn't such a caveman.

I now look online for old legacy stuff, as trying to round up working
install packages here is not always easy. No nefarious purpose. I own
the discs, so finding already done copies is not a crime. Gotta love the
internet. AND QEMU AND DOSBox.

AND Old hardware! (I speak for myself ) (where's my coffee?!)(Maybe
put some Jamison's in there)