Thank goodness for Firewire

[sbisson]

My desktop PC's data disk is dying - so I'm updating everything on it to my firewire backup disk (including the stuff I don't normally backup).

Proabbaly time to rethink just how I use this machine. I'm considering dropping it down to a single disk system, but with a much bigger drive. Following a suggestion from jonhoneyball, I'll be running scheduled backups to two firewire drives - and (as ramtops suggests) handing one to a friend when we go on holiday (or sticking it in the car when we're away in the UK).

I have to remember - this PC is my whole livelihood now. And I need to treat it as being that important.

And there are things on it which may not be work, but are still important to me. So I need to back them up as well.

Comments

Re: So can Windows NT/2000/XP

[tanais.livejournal.com]

>By the way, I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about having two hard drives in the same PC,
>which means that if one fails the other has a complete copy of everything

I wasn't sure if Simon was using that OS seeing as he had a TiBook last time I was there...

Yes generally that is how RAID is defined. Two Identical drives can be twinned and then setup as a RAID array. I dunno if its a function of the fast IDE card that came inside the G3 whn I got it but when I saw it and it cam as an option at OS install I though "aha" and went for it.

I'd time the backups to do it overnight. Thankkfully I no longer need to work with Gb files anymore and will never every go back to that sort of work again and reckon 802.11b will cope with our home network.

Its exhilarating dragging 120Gb of work into the trash where it will be lost forever after I erase the data and format (a particularly crap client's deadline for CDR backups of templates and back issues of a Magazine ended a few days ago). I almost hope they will call me to ask if I can supply them with backups so I can laugh at them...

Re: So can Windows NT/2000/XP

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

If I was working with those volumes of data, I'd invest in a hardware RAID card and probably put six 120GB drives with one for striping and one spare on standby, giving me 480GB of space available (RAID 5).

Windows 2003 Server has a rather cool sounding option that you can tell it to keep previous versions of every file, so if you accidently erase or overwrite a file, you can get it back. Previously you'd have to go looking for your backups (or call the network administrator and try and sweet talk them into restoring it for you). Now you can just right-click and restore previous version, and the OS will say "which previous version would sir like?" Of course, this is all in theory. I haven't tried it, but that's the way I'd like it to work in practice. And I'd like it to be available on the desktop versions.

Re: So can Windows NT/2000/XP

[tanais.livejournal.com]

those big old photoshop files, scans, backups ot altered images plus quark files and uncompressed pdfs at 2400dpi really eat into your hdd space but i'm glad i'm back just jockeying word. If my hardware reflected my usage I'd probably be using a speak and spell these days. Or rather I feel like I have a really flash car solly being used to do the grocery run...

yeah time to sell this thing and get me a laptop. Easier when I'm having a gimp day