Re: [APML] OT: External Hard Drives for Archiving data

[Greg Mueller <mueller@silverlink.net>]

I've seen Dale Irelands set up and it's about the cleanest solution I've seen.
The removable hard drive (slide in) works easily and you can have as many as
you want. Using Norton's Ghost, makes a complete copy, if you want to back up
everything (and I mean everything), and you can take it out and store it
somewhere safe, so no lightening problems. You could even change your whole
operating system this way. The amount of Hdrive space is unlimited, plus you
can transport any amount of data you want.

AMaroney@sptimes.com wrote:

> > This is very true. I have a separate hard drive mounted in a removeable
> caddy for backups.
> > Up until recently I was pretty lazy with it and rarely took it out of
> the computer.
> > That was until windoze decided that my data really wasn't all that
> important and corrupted the partition table.
>
> All mechanical devices will fail, given enough time.  Mirroring drives
> will help against localized mechanical failure (the drive), but a
> lightning hit or evil software may still clobber both drives (in a simple
> mirror).  Drives are like the stock market  - only keep on a drive what
> you can afford to loose.
>
> There was an interesting a article couple of years ago  (Scientific
> America I believe) that said that the media usually outlives the readers.
> For instance I have many 8" hard sectored floppy disks, but no system with
> a drive to read them.  Some day CDs will go away in favor of holographic
> memory cubes (or something).   Ironically, the most durable archive medium
> in the computer era is hard copy - we can still read 30 year old
> printouts, but try to find a wire memory reader.
>
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--
==
Greg Mueller   Port Gamble, Washington
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut

Tech Tools and Astronomer's Gizmos
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
Homepage
http://users.silverlink.net/~mueller/
==



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