a lesson to everyone about backing up data

[CrackedSun]

Re: a lesson to everyone about backing up data

I'm gettting 250 gig external hard drive (Wester Digital) from www.pricewatch.com for $128.00...that includes shipping...a friend of mine told me to also back your back ups....

A year or so ago, I bought a 120 gig internal for the same price. Geez, have prices going down or what? :?

yah, i've noticed recently you can get ridiculously large hard drives for real cheap...i need to invest soon...my harddrive crashed this summer and i lost more software and such than anything, luckily most of my music was also on my mp3 player/external drive and CDRs. I'm now getting worried about my mp3 player crashing as it's really just a portable hardrive innit?
and its like 3 years old at this point...
ahhhhhhhhh the downfalls of technology

[phazon]

I've got two 200Gb HDDs RAIDed using the RAID controller on the motherboard. This seems to be the best solution to me - if a HDD dies then pull it out and whack a new one in, the mirror will automatically rebuild. Sweet.

More expensive upfront as you need two HDDs, but no need to keep buying CDRs/DVDRs and a shitload less hassle.

[CrackedSun]

I've got two 200Gb HDDs RAIDed using the RAID controller on the motherboard. This seems to be the best solution to me - if a HDD dies then pull it out and whack a new one in, the mirror will automatically rebuild. Sweet.

More expensive upfront as you need two HDDs, but no need to keep buying CDRs/DVDRs and a shitload less hassle.

could you maybe elaborate a little? not too sure whatchu talkin bout?

[TomTom]

More details about RAID and the different modes can be found here: http://www.ahinc.com/raid.htm

[phazon]

Good link Tom. I'm using RAID 1 - Mirroring. That is, the contents of one disk are automatically 'mirrored' on a second drive. If either drive dies, then you replace the disk and the mirror array will rebuild itself. Pretty safe, as you'd be seriously unlucky to lose two disks at once. But you lose 50% of the disk capacity you have in the array.

To do this you need a RAID controller - a lot of motherboards have them built in now.

[day_for_night]

ya i've decided to say fuck it, and spend nearly a grand to get the data recovered from a company in toronto. i just cant stand the thought of having to get it all back (which i dont think i could do if i tried, some of it is very rare). the nice thing is, they said they'll put it up on an ftp and i can just download it at my convience...should only take a couple weeks of constant downloading :P

[DaStottman]

Re: a lesson to everyone about backing up data

I once lost 15GB, but that was back in the day when I first started downloading

[White_Hindu]

Word of caution:
CD-Rs go bad after around 3 years. Do not rely on a CD-R for permanent backup. The best solution is keep two hard disks. One for pure backups, and one for use. If you have a backup drive, never read data from it unless you are creating a ghost copy. If you read files from a backup drive it wears down mechanical motors inside the drive, and it degrades the data quality.

As for the different kinds of RAID, there is RAID 0(striped), RAID 1(mirrored), and RAID 5(striped and mirrored, requires 4 drives minimum).

Striped volumes write data to two hard drives at the same time, effectively cutting read/write time in half. It is good if you want a fast computer, but if one drive dies, you lose ALL data, as you need both drives to successfully read data. Mirrored, as mentioned above, simply makes a copy of your main hard drive and always serves as a backup.

Striped and mirrored is the best, but most expensive RAID array. It stripes your main drives, and then makes a mirror of each drive so if one drive dies, you always have a backup.

Striped volumes are almost always used to greatly increase computer performance. Mirrored volumes are used by companies with mainframes to protect data. If you're careful and patient, you don't need either.

[DJZeke]

Re: a lesson to everyone about backing up data

I'm gettting 250 gig external hard drive (Wester Digital) from www.pricewatch.com for $128.00...that includes shipping...a friend of mine told me to also back your back ups....

good idea, i have been recently had touble with drives lately and i don't want my music drive to fail i have about 150 gigs of mp3s so that is still a lot of dvds to backup. I think i am going to invest in high quality enterprise drives.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/ATA%20Hard%20Drives/Midline%20Applications/MaXLine%20III

also seagate drives now have a 5 year warranty.

[day_for_night]

Re: a lesson to everyone about backing up data

I'm gettting 250 gig external hard drive (Wester Digital) from www.pricewatch.com for $128.00...that includes shipping...a friend of mine told me to also back your back ups....

good idea, i have been recently had touble with drives lately and i don't want my music drive to fail i have about 150 gigs of mp3s so that is still a lot of dvds to backup. I think i am going to invest in high quality enterprise drives.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.ba88f6d7cf664718376049b291346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Products/ATA%20Hard%20Drives/Midline%20Applications/MaXLine%20III

also seagate drives now have a 5 year warranty.

how much is that bad boy?

[master of puppets]

I make backups all weeks, I don't want this happens to me.