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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sean W. Smith who wrote (1200)	6/8/1998 3:02:00 PM
From: Dave Hanson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Backup solution: Sean, I think you're too quick to dismiss Zeuspaul's suggestion here. It all depends on what you want to do with your backup solution. Your objections: 1. Cost per meg. That depends. With good, fast, >10 gig IDE drives hitting $300, and no need to buy a tape or cartridge reader, it may not be more expensive. 2. Multiple revisions. On the contrary, using Drive Image (not Disk Image), one can save many revisions of a partition to one's backup (and primary) hard drives. And it's so much faster and easier than tape or other media that incremental backups become less necessary (but still possible--just back up directories selectively.) 3. Removability. No, not with removable drive trays and adequate cooling (essential). This has worked fine for me and others. 4. Disaster recovery. Actually, Here is one among several areas where spare drives excell. If a disaster wipes out your main drive, just replace with a backup and you're all set. There are also many advantages of using this system that other methods lack. Its convenience and speed simply can't be beat. And in my experience, cheaper cartridge or tape solutions are less reliable than good modern IDE drives. (If you can afford DAT or another mid-high end solution, that's a bit different, of course.) Finally, a big extra hard drive can do double or triple duty. In addition to backing up your data, it can make tweaking, experimenting, etc. virtually risk-free. (See earlier posts the auxiliary on using HDDs with promise controllers, modern bios settings, and the like.) You certainly raise valid criteria for a backup solution--I just think you're too quick to dismiss hard drives, _properly implemented_, as a workable response.