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Sometimes I hate technology

Hornet3d

Wise
So for a few years now I have been using Amazon Drive to give me cloud backup for my data. I hated the Amazon app which had to have a special folder earmarked for syncing and it also duplicated deletions which I was not happy with. The price of storage was good so I used a piece of software call Goodsync to do all my backup on a regular basis. It has a lot of options and it took a while to have it running as I wanted but once set up it was easy to use. As I said I used it for a few years no problem. This week I come to use it and I get a message that from 22nd of August Amazon no longer allow third part apps to work with Amazon Drive. I am therefore forced to use the Amazon photo app, which despite the name, will allow the back up of data other than just photos or videos. The app is better than what went before, at least I thought so until I spend the best part of a day trying to sync my runtimes. Despite the fact they already exist on Amazon Drive the new app refuses to recognise this fact and wants to start from scratch. Now I have a very fast broadband but that is only for down load, upload is appallingly slow so 290Gig of data is going to take days, and that is just my runtimes. Not only that but when I sync the folder the app is showing the data at only 162Gig, I thought that might be due to compression until I saw the files are missing some 200,000 files. The final straw is that if I try to display just what is being uploaded the app crashes on both my Windows 7 and Window 10 machine.

The only saving grace is that I only had three weeks left on Amazon Drive before I needed to renew. I have now cancelled the auto card debit so my storage allowance will fail in a few weeks. I do have an alternative which I can now use to do backup, archiving and syncing with very little effort and it can be done in background or overnight but it still means I am starting from scratch with days of uploading in front of me and also having to denude Amazon Drive. All this just because a large operation decided to change the rules and not even tell me they had done so. Sometimes I hate technology and what is introduced in the name of progress.
 

HaiGan

Energetic
Contributing Artist
Want to bet Amazon come up with a better but chargeable option?

Huge kudos for making so very certain that you have good backups of everything. So many people don't. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. And you are NOT one of them. Despite the frustration, what you will not have is the heartache when you need to refer to a backup you should have made and did not.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Want to bet Amazon come up with a better but chargeable option?

Huge kudos for making so very certain that you have good backups of everything. So many people don't. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. And you are NOT one of them. Despite the frustration, what you will not have is the heartache when you need to refer to a backup you should have made and did not.


Having worked in a computer repair shop I am very aware of the pain and frustration caused by data loss and I am amazed at how often it still happens. At the end of day my new solution is easier set up and I get 2Tb for almost the same price as Amazon was costing me for 1Tb. I think it is really the difference between cloud sharing and cloud back up, Amazon is aimed at sharing your photos and videos while my solution is better suited to pure back up and restore.
 

Rowan54

Dragon Queen
Contributing Artist
I do my backups to an external drive. (3TB) Which is mine. Which I can unplug and walk off with (as it's small enough to put in a large pocket), and then re-plug anywhere that has a USB port and an electrical plugin. Which no one charges further fees for. Frankly, I've never understood the idea of backing up to basically someone else's machine where you no longer have full control of your own data and then they charge you for storage.
As an added bonus, I can do backups even when the internet is down. We went without home internet for 17 months once.
On top of that, I have things for longer-term storage burned to CD or DVD. (Yes, checked occasionally, and sometimes reburned. Still works as storage.)
 

HaiGan

Energetic
Contributing Artist
Sadly, I have carefully backed-up files that I not only no longer have the software to read, but no longer have the operating system which would run the software required, and in a couple of cases no longer possess the hardware capable of running the OS that would run the software that would read the files.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
I do my backups to an external drive. (3TB) Which is mine. Which I can unplug and walk off with (as it's small enough to put in a large pocket), and then re-plug anywhere that has a USB port and an electrical plugin. Which no one charges further fees for. Frankly, I've never understood the idea of backing up to basically someone else's machine where you no longer have full control of your own data and then they charge you for storage.
As an added bonus, I can do backups even when the internet is down. We went without home internet for 17 months once.
On top of that, I have things for longer-term storage burned to CD or DVD. (Yes, checked occasionally, and sometimes reburned. Still works as storage.)

Having seen so many people lose photos and videos that can never be recovered I am neurotic about backups, I do all that you do and then some. I have DVD back up of the most important photos on archival quality DVDs (M discs) so they do not need to be copied every few years. All of my poser stuff is backed up to a second computer and also to USB drives. None of this is of much use if my house is burgled and both my computers and all my drives are stolen so I also have another backup in a Network Storage Device hidden in another location in the house. None of this is useful if I am unfortunate to have a fire that destroys the house or have a major flood. So the last back up exists in the cloud where it can be downloaded to any location and any computer providing there is an authorised access to my account the encryption access to the back ups themselves. 2TB of cloud storage cost £77 a year so about £6.50 a month, that sort of size rules out USB pens and they can fail without warning. SSDs of this size would be about £200 , while a conventional drive of this size is around £60. Close to the same price for the first year but I realise that the hard drives should last 4 to five years but they are going to be locally based.

In the end what you pay for back up is a very personal thing as it depends on so many factors such as how much you photos mean to you and how much money you have to spare. As I have grown older my photos and the memories they invoke has become more and more important to me. Luckily for me, as I have grown older, my spendable income is under less pressure as I have no mortgage to pay and the cost of storage has come down.

I will add one last comment that may explain my intense desire to back up. While working in the computer shop one day I had the horrible task of explaining to a middle aged and very pleasant woman that, despite my best efforts and that of a specialist data recover company that the data on her computer's hard drive was not recoverable. Contained on that drive was a recording of a local TV company that had interviewed her daughter about a local event some years earlier. Sadly a few years later her daughter, then in her early twenties, had died. I remember how bad I felt at the time and remember it as if it was yesterday. It is too late to comprehend how important something is to us after it has been irrevocably destroyed.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Sadly, I have carefully backed-up files that I not only no longer have the software to read, but no longer have the operating system which would run the software required, and in a couple of cases no longer possess the hardware capable of running the OS that would run the software that would read the files.


Yep a sad part of technology. I had a computer running Windows XP up until a year or so ago because I had a costly and high quality scanner that HP decided not to write Windows 7 drivers for. My Father and Mother in law were recently contacted by their bank saying that their on line banking platform will no longer support Windows XP and as support for Windows 7 was reaching an end they recommended upgrading to Windows 10. So to continue to bank with them they would need to spend a good chunk of £300 to get a new computer or buy a tablet to do on-line banking.

As they are both in their eighties they decided not to do so and use their free bus passes to go into the local branch and use the facilities there, they are lucky at least they do have a local branch. Even then the branch is staffed with about ten terminals and one person who is there just to tell them, with a smile, how limited the services are in that branch.
 

Rowan54

Dragon Queen
Contributing Artist
In the end what you pay for back up is a very personal thing as it depends on so many factors such as how much you photos mean to you and how much money you have to spare. As I have grown older my photos and the memories they invoke has become more and more important to me. Luckily for me, as I have grown older, my spendable income is under less pressure as I have no mortgage to pay and the cost of storage has come down.
Given that I've had many years with almost no income, paying out money hasn't been really an option -- at least for not more than the backups I described above. (And certainly not for anything that cost money every month because up until the SSI I started getting a couple months ago, my income wasn't certain for every month.) All I can say is that they're safer in the computer, even without any backups, than in the room with the roof leak. Easier to share, as well.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Given that I've had many years with almost no income, paying out money hasn't been really an option -- at least for not more than the backups I described above. (And certainly not for anything that cost money every month because up until the SSI I started getting a couple months ago, my income wasn't certain for every month.) All I can say is that they're safer in the computer, even without any backups, than in the room with the roof leak. Easier to share, as well.


I totally understand where you are coming from, when the money runs short you need to look hard at priorities, been there and done that.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
So six days on and I am beginning to see the wood for the trees. 1Tb of data has now been uploaded to the new site and as I purchased 2Tb for less than I was paying for 1Tb at Amazon I am fairly happy. That gives me head room as the data gets larger every time I buy new content or create renders and take photographs. All the data on the Amazon drive has been deleted and the subscription cancelled. To give Amazon their due I did receive refund for the period not used even though I did not ask for it. All that is left now is for me to delete any Goodsync jobs I have still pointing at Amazon and create new ones to point at my NAS unit as I moved some data around between my computers. I do not need the set up new jobs with the new providers as all I needed to do was designate the folders I wanted to sync. If all goes well the whole project will have taken me a week which is a lot less than I expected it would take when I started the whole process. Perhaps then I can get back to the real important stuff like playing with Poser
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Well another five or six hours of my life wasted trying to get a Hive View Outdoor camera that did work but stopped. Gave up after an hour or more and rang tech support. Three hours later I have used three different devices, updated the Hive app on all three, reset my broadband router, finally convinced them it is not my broadband being slow, well unless it needs more than 200mb/sec. Powered the camera on and off something like thirty times reset it more than ten. End result, still not working and I have to email them screen shots of the error messages I am getting as 'they have never seen them before'.

I think I am going to give up and buy a standard Wi-Fi camera at a quarter of the price.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
So six days on and I am beginning to see the wood for the trees. 1Tb of data has now been uploaded to the new site and as I purchased 2Tb for less than I was paying for 1Tb at Amazon I am fairly happy. That gives me head room as the data gets larger every time I buy new content or create renders and take photographs. All the data on the Amazon drive has been deleted and the subscription cancelled. To give Amazon their due I did receive refund for the period not used even though I did not ask for it. All that is left now is for me to delete any Goodsync jobs I have still pointing at Amazon and create new ones to point at my NAS unit as I moved some data around between my computers. I do not need the set up new jobs with the new providers as all I needed to do was designate the folders I wanted to sync. If all goes well the whole project will have taken me a week which is a lot less than I expected it would take when I started the whole process. Perhaps then I can get back to the real important stuff like playing with Poser

If they don't know already, I would send them a special email telling them exactly why you took your money and left. It probably won't change anything, but that's part of the problem. Not enough people complain to the right people anymore. So Amazon probably thinks they're either doing the right thing or enough people are okay with what they're doing that they can whether the storm. That's why I suggested the petition to Renderosity or to send them a survey. You notice, nothing's been done on that, by the way.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
If they don't know already, I would send them a special email telling them exactly why you took your money and left. It probably won't change anything, but that's part of the problem. Not enough people complain to the right people anymore. So Amazon probably thinks they're either doing the right thing or enough people are okay with what they're doing that they can whether the storm. That's why I suggested the petition to Renderosity or to send them a survey. You notice, nothing's been done on that, by the way.


They are going to get a letter when this is all over even if the only thing it does is let me vent. I also got a 'How did we do: survey so you can imagien how I responded to that. Thing that annoys me is for the is for the outdoor camera to work is needs a special hub, cost £99, the camera is another £179.00. One of our local supermarkets is selling standard Wi-Fi outdoor HD camera for £29.99.
 
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