Hudson187 wrote:

a single FTP site that would never die/go under

😕

DosFreak wrote:

All data is offsited (at work) using multiple dual bay synology NAS with 1 NAS synced per week. Unfortunately I'm running out on space on those so I hope the 5TB hard drives come out this year. ( I can't even do snapshots due to how low on space I am 🙁 )

Wait, you're using your workplace's facility to back up your gaming files? 😁

Same here. 😁

DosFreak wrote:

I've been looking at LTO5/6 as an alternative backup but I like the portability of the NAS. If I go somewhere I can just dump it in a bag and it's readily accessible.

Same here. I still have problem finding the perfect NAS for me though. Drobo is easy to configure and easy to expand, but its reliability is somewhat questionable. I heard QNap is the mirror opposite.

Jorpho wrote:

Hudson187 wrote:

a single FTP site that would never die/go under

😕

Really though -- what if, just what if, a group of dedicated individuals (such as myself) were to start a website just for this purpose? Yearly costs aren't much and the community could submit files and whatnot -- be closely tied to VOGONS; we could mirror drivers as well...

Hudson187 wrote:

Really though -- what if, just what if, a group of dedicated individuals (such as myself) were to start a website just for this purpose? Yearly costs aren't much and the community could submit files and whatnot -- be closely tied to VOGONS; we could mirror drivers as well...

The Internet Archive's already doing a helluva job (read up the thread), you just need to join #ArchiveTeam. (As do I, for that matter.)

Stiletto wrote:

The Internet Archive's already doing a helluva job (read up the thread), you just need to join #ArchiveTeam. (As do I, for that matter.)

Thanks -- I may join this and try to help preserve some of these ftps/sites. I'm becoming more and more concerned about older drivers/manuals for hardware.

Stiletto wrote:

Hudson187 wrote:

Really though -- what if, just what if, a group of dedicated individuals (such as myself) were to start a website just for this purpose? Yearly costs aren't much and the community could submit files and whatnot -- be closely tied to VOGONS; we could mirror drivers as well...

The Internet Archive's already doing a helluva job (read up the thread), you just need to join #ArchiveTeam. (As do I, for that matter.)

Robots.txt defeats Internet Archive.

sliderider wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

Hudson187 wrote:

Really though -- what if, just what if, a group of dedicated individuals (such as myself) were to start a website just for this purpose? Yearly costs aren't much and the community could submit files and whatnot -- be closely tied to VOGONS; we could mirror drivers as well...

The Internet Archive's already doing a helluva job (read up the thread), you just need to join #ArchiveTeam. (As do I, for that matter.)

Robots.txt defeats Internet Archive.

Yes, but it doesn't defeat ArchiveTeam.

First off, the topic of this thread is FTP site backup, not web site backup. FTP sites don't have robots.txt (unless they're also web accessible).

Secondly, the Internet Archive originally only had a small FTP backup but then started accepting user submissions of FTP sites they've archived. MrFlibble covers it here.
Re: Preservation of historical ftp site content
The majority of user submissions come from ArchiveTeam.

Really though -- what if, just what if, a group of dedicated individuals (such as myself) were to start a website just for this purpose?

Manually ignore robots.txt to get certain websites? Manually start large distributed archive projects to rescue things like GeoCities? This is what they DO. ArchiveTeam: http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

They already have the FTP Boneyard. As MrFlibble says, the only thing that sucks is the interface. You can't search the entire Archive for a specific filename. BUT if you know that they archived the FTP site and put it in the FTP Boneyard, and you know which FTP site...

Example:
5 days ago someone from ArchiveTeam (or elsewhere) submitted a backup of ftp.cs.ucla.edu. The Internet Archive currently has it as a ZIP.
https://archive.org/details/2014.01.ftp.cs.ucla.edu
Download for the entire backup: https://archive.org/download/2014.01.ftp.cs.u … cs.ucla.edu.zip
Or, you could torrent it: https://archive.org/download/2014.01.ftp.cs.u … archive.torrent
But you can also browse within: https://archive.org/download/2014.01.ftp.cs.u … s.ucla.edu.zip/
Note the difference between the download link and the browse link is a /.
I don't think their system offers the browse link automatically, but it should.
The browse link then redirects here: https://ia700509.us.archive.org/zipview.php?z … cs.ucla.edu.zip
which is a giant file listing. And you can search that.

It doesn't make sense NOT to use their system. They're offering free hosting (though they'll accept donations). A free user interface. Its distributed mirrors around the nation or world. Their remaining issues are merely usability issues (and occasionally legal issues like anyone else).

So steps:
1. You back up an FTP site as a giant ZIP or Tar or whatever
2. You submit to Internet Archive with some metadata (where, when)
3. They host, you walk away and do the next one.
4. You join ArchiveTeam and collaborate with other nerds who want to help each other do this. 😀

PS. http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Robots.txt

The only OTHER thing you miss out on is that, say, qs6brb1.zip was the driver file for the QuickShot ProPad 6 Serial Gamepad. But FTP servers don't normally have this info either. Sites, yes. And you can backup those too.

Yikes, the walls have ears! 😁
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4199

Okay, so I came across as a hard sell, sliderider. So lemme redirect:

Yes, archiving FTP sites is a hell of a good idea. People should be doing it. I think we agree on that.

Apparently LucasArts FTP is down, reasons unknown.

[Edit] Just found it was grabbed by the Archive Team:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.lucasarts.com-20130427

MrFlibble wrote:

Apparently LucasArts FTP is down, reasons unknown.

[Edit] Just found it was grabbed by the Archive Team:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.lucasarts.com-20130427

Reasons unknown? Did you miss the past year's LucasArts closure? 😀

Stiletto wrote:

Did you miss the past year's LucasArts closure? 😀

No I didn't, the FTP wasn't closed down immediately and I kind of assumed that it would stay online, even though the studio itself was closed.

And actually, by 'reasons unknown" I meant that it is not known whether the FTP was shut down for good or just undergoes maintenance/has technical issues.

Hello people!

I retrieve many files of the former Microprose ftp site from the web.archive.org and some other sources.
There is the list of files i can't find yet (or unsure for the file authentity):

1. /mps-online/demos/ATRDEM.ZIP - not found
2. /mps-online/demos/GREENS1.ZIP - not found
3. /mps-online/demos/PGDEMO.ZIP - the only founded copy is incomlete (125,760 bytes of 1,316,735)
4. /mps-online/new-versions/M1FIRE.ZIP - not found
5. /mps-online/new-versions/MPSLONG.TXT - not found; probably it is just a part of /mps-online/MPSLONG.TXT file
6. /mps-online/new-versions/MPSNL993.TXT - not found; due to description the file is misplaced (must be in /mps-online/press-releases/)
7. /mps-online/new-versions/NEWEXE.ZIP - not found; due to description it probably contains FOOTBALL.EXE from UFV131.ZIP
8. /mps-online/new-versions/PGVER3.ZIP - founded copies have different sizes than original file
9. /mps-online/new-versions/readme.txt - it is impossible to identify a file with such name
10. /mps-online/new-versions/REX849.ZIP - founded copies have different sizes than original file
11. /mps-online/new-versions/SLUMFI.ZIP - founded file "slumfix.zip" has different name and size than original file
12. /mps-online/new-versions/SOSKEY.ZIP - not found
13. /mps-online/new-versions/SS2V3.ZIP - founded copies have different sizes than original file
14. /mps-online/new-versions/SW202.ZIP - founded copies have different sizes than original file
15. /mps-online/new-versions/UFV12.ZIP - not found; probably superceded by UFV131.ZIP
16. /mps-online/utilities/directx.zip - unknown which version of DX it is; i substitute it by a copy of DX 3.0a as most recent version at the original file timestamp
17. /sh-online/demos/fmcdem.sea - not found; no idea which game this demo file belongs to
18. /sh-online/demos/sttng.zip - not found; probably it is early "Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity" demo mentioned sometimes (not the later demo CD which is much bigger than 3 Mb)

If you have one of the files listed above, please let me know how i can acquire it.
I plan to share retrieved "ftp.microprose.com" as a torrent soon.

As promised, i share the recovered files as a torrent. Here is the magnetic link:

1magnet:?xt=urn:btih:9721F01D29035B0C8033A5EC466954CE8FC5B9C2&dn=ftp.microprose.com&tr=http%3a%2f%2ftracker1.torrentino.com%2fannounce%3fpasskey%3d00000000000000000000000000000000

Think I found ATRDEM.ZIP here:
http://cd.textfiles.com/sprintos6/GAMEDEMO/AK/

Thank you for your support, but what we are missing is named "atrdem.zip", not "atrdemo.zip".
The file you found is not even original "atrdemo.zip" but a slightly modified and repacked copy of the "atrvesa.zip" file. We already have it in original too.

Yellow Horror wrote:

Thank you for your support, but what we are missing is named "atrdem.zip", not "atrdemo.zip".
The file you found is not even original "atrdemo.zip" but a slightly modified and repacked copy of the "atrvesa.zip" file. We already have it in original too.

Sorry, I probably missed the o. I searched using file description and saw the filename pop up.

This guy on another forum took Yellow Horror's reconstruction of ftp.microprose.com and stashed it on "firedrive.com"
http://www.firedrive.com/file/124C182778FAB7B8
http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/topic/10 … capeexe-update/

In the other thread:
Red Storm Rising MT32 Upgrade
Cloudschatze says they were looking for "mpsrol.zip". I remembered Yellow Horror's post, and went back to try to grab it from Yellow Horror's archive.
However, mpsrol.zip inside his archive was a 3KB HTML file explaining that the Internet Archive server hosting "mpsrol.zip" was down! I've seen this before, thought I downloaded a ZIP file from Archive.org when instead I downloaded an Archive.org error message in HTML format saved as the ZIP file in question.

So I went to http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ftp.micro … iles/mpsrol.zip myself, and of course it was working now.

So Yellow Horror's archive needs a little work yet.

Yellow Horror, you had better check your archive for other files like this! Easy way is to check all ZIP files for corruption, verifying/testing them with 7zip or your favorite tool.

When I get a free moment, I'll try looking for the rest of your missing files.

I hope you looked at:
http://www.darklands.net/files/mpsfiles.txt
ftp://ftp2.de.freebsd.org/pub/linux/tux/tux/n … os/mpsfiles.txt
to reconstruct it! 😀 If not, they might give you some ideas for files you are missing.

I can tell this will be a candidate for alternative hosting at archive.org (even though you got a lot of it from within archive.org) - perhaps at the FTP Site Boneyard: https://archive.org/details/ftpsites

Another note: I did another quick look through Google searching for "ftp.microprose.com/pub/" and snagging URLs when I saw them.
Which found some other missing files from your archive.
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … iupdatev1.3.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … sions/dk4_6.zip
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ons/eawv1-2.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ns/eawv1-2F.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ns/eawv1-2G.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … rsions/f305.zip
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ons/f4108us.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ons/mpaddon.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ns/mw3v11uk.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ns/mw3v12fr.exe
ftp://ftp.microprose.com/pub/mps-online/new-v … ions/update.exe

here's a start for more:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ftp.microp … 0&sa=N&filter=0

.. I think you still have a lot to do. Let us know if you need/want more help.

They probably didn't get transitioned from BBS to FTP, but has anyone has ever come across the "MPSTANDY.EXE" and "DIGITAL.BIN" files that comprise MicroProse's Tandy jukebox? I imagine the archive might have been named MPSTJB.ZIP.

I thought I'd post up a few FTP search engines, for those who don't know - they DO exist. It's rare these days that they find things for me that Google cannot, though.

As of today:
MAMONT - Total files found - 1 Bil. 722 Mil. 723 Thou. 079
http://www.mmnt.ru/int/

NAPALM - Searching 535,362,558 files (5493.36 TB) in 19,587 FTP servers
http://www.search-ftps.com/

FileWatcher.com - "Search over ten billion files" (meh)
http://www.filewatcher.com/

FileSearching.com - Total size: 6323.6 Gb, Files: 2,390,502
http://www.filesearching.com/

GlobalFileSearch.com - http://globalfilesearch.com/

FileMare.com - http://filemare.com

FTPSearch.co - http://www.ftpsearch.co/