backing up stuff?

Ebay is surprisingly good for selling second hand hard drives, so you don't need to keep them.

That would be called a *mirror*.

A backup is not a backup until it's off-site.

3 hard drives dead in about 6 weeks, all seagate 200G.

Just spent a day, succesfully (?) recovering most data. 150GB's

Made some clones with Norton Ghost,

1) basic non mobo specific XP setup, and

2) one with all the bells and whistles, ie dual head video drivers, java, etc for a specific mobo etc

I've just got too much data for DVD backups

Apart from going RAID, since I'd probably have to buy a few more drives just to back up the data before creating a RAIDarray.

Any other suggestions, alternatives to Ghost or like S.M.A.R.T monitoring apps I should think about?

martin

RAID doesn't completely solve the problem. You could still have data loss from a disk controller going bad or what have you.

If it is worth it to you, you could back up to tape. High capacity tape drives (e.g., LTO) are expensive ($1500 US?), but the tape is cheap ($40 per 100 GB).

There is a utility called rsync which can help you replicate data from one place to another without wasting bandwidth. You could set up one machine as a mirror, and the other as an active machine. Then you could have rsync run once per day late at night (or whenever you are not likely to be using the computers) to sync up the mirror.

Have fun.

--Mac

Or the loose nut behind the keyboard.

DVD is cheaper, though 4.7GB is a PITA. Hard disks are cheap too. Either copy the contents periodically (my choice) or mirror them. Some have one of the mirrored set in a removeable tray. After making the mirror the removeable gets taken to work (or home) and another put in its place and then the mirror is rebuilt.

This alternative not only backs up the data, but the function, at the cost of an entire machine. It's still wasting bandwidth, though bandwidth that is otherwise unused, perhaps. Some still get charged for use though.

--
  Keith

Right again. Offsite backup is the only truly safe way to go. There are internet backup services that can be had fairly cheaply. There has to be literally hundreds of these services out there. Or, you can mail a weekly DVD to a friend, or just take them into the office with you.

However, the only way I've ever lost files in nearly 30 years of using computers is by a disk drive going belly up. I've never had a computer stolen, or lost any data when a mainboard basically blew up, and took every PCI card on the system with it. I've never had a house fire, or a lightning strike, or a coffee spill into my PC. I've never fired a weapon at my PC out of anger or frustration... *

Thus, using some kind of RAID mirror, or even a simple nightly backup between installed disks, would have saved every file I've ever lost. I suspect that is true of 99.9% of the folks out there. Using a network disk appliance would be even safer, because they can be on different circuits, and are probably immune to virii and obvious user errors.

• So, it is amazing to me that nearly any wacky thought I have can be searched for on the internet, and some oddball has actually done it, taken pictures, and put them up on a website. What a wonderful world...

--
Regards,
  Bob Monsen

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has
so much as to be out of danger?
                                  Thomas Henry Huxley, 1877

What I meant when I said "without wasting bandwidth" is that rsync will only copy files which need to be copied. Files which already exist and are up to date on the target will not be copied. Also it uses some kind of difference detection to attempt to handle modified files efficiently.

It is all documented on the Internet. Just search for rsync.

--Mac

On Sun, 07 Aug 2005 13:26:19 -0700, Bob Monsen wrote: ...

...

Yeah, but after you shoot it, do you eat it?

--
Cheers!
Rich
 ------
 "There\'s nothing wrong with America that a good erection wouldn\'t cure."
   -- David Mairowitz

Yum! The Church of Dahmer.

Related reading:

--
Regards,
  Bob Monsen

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has
so much as to be out of danger?
                                  Thomas Henry Huxley, 1877