[Soundscape]

 

[byronyu]

u should definitely back up. I've only had one harddrive fail on me before, but it just has to happen once.

WHen i thought about backing up, i toyed with the idea of just putting another hd on my pc, but if both the primary hd and back hd are on at the same time, it's just a crap shoot. If one ends up failing, how long before the other on possible could? so instead of buying just 1 replacement hd, i'd have to buy 2 for peace of mind.. endless cycle.

Figured the best way was to have the back up isan external hd that's only on when backing up.

I don't use any fancy software. I just copy the files i want backed up once a month. For me, i'm mostly backing up music and pics, so they don't get updated as often, i know exactly what to backup.

 

[BushGuy]

The frequency of doing backups is dependent on the amount volume and exclusiveness/originality of new files (or alterations) of new material generated. I've had more than one (read that as several) hard-drive failures over the years - the drives involved were of the best brand and generally considered highly-reliable models of the well-guaranteed brand. .............today, dvd's, and cd's are soo cheap it is ridiculous not to backup data on a bi-weekly and also individual file basis...........it is also handy to have a firewired exterior h.-drive for the myriad of small progs. that tend to be frequently revised/updated..........otherwise it is better to do new install of o/s(s).

 

[byronyu]

backing up 160gb of songs on dvd's? nah.

 

[rocktboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by byronyu u should definitely back up. I've only had one harddrive fail on me before, but it just has to happen once. WHen i thought about backing up, i toyed with the idea of just putting another hd on my pc, but if both the primary hd and back hd are on at the same time, it's just a crap shoot. If one ends up failing, how long before the other on possible could? so instead of buying just 1 replacement hd, i'd have to buy 2 for peace of mind.. endless cycle. Figured the best way was to have the back up isan external hd that's only on when backing up. I don't use any fancy software. I just copy the files i want backed up once a month. For me, i'm mostly backing up music and pics, so they don't get updated as often, i know exactly what to backup.

I am a hard drive design engineer working for Maxtor.
you can put 2 hard drives in the same pc and the probability of BOTH failing at the same time are very, very slim. Assuming you don't have a flood or a fire or some sort of power surge that destroys the whole PC. And normally power surges kills the pcba, all the drive data are still on the disk, you can recover all of it just by putting another identical PCBA on the drive.

Yes I certainly recommend back up either using internal drive or an external drive. Drives are so cheap now days it'll be silly to not backup your data. there are penty of backup software out there that makes the back up process almost transparent to the user. Just set it up, and forget about it.

 

[pedxing]

If you don't like the idea of making manual backups all the time, you can try to build a RAID. But having a RAID is probably an over kill and can be a headache to setup. I think disk mirroring is the cheapest form of redundancy with RAID.

 

[byronyu]

rocktboy,

i'm not saying that they'll fail at the same time. I'm saying that if u have both a primary hd, and a back hd on all the time, and after say 5 years one of them fail. Well, can u really trust the other one lasting another 5 years? Y bother having both at the same time? Just let one be on all the time, and keep the other one off.

 

[Sparky191]

Just buy a big external disk the approx the same size or bigger than your internal disk and then get some software, (some Ext. HD's come with synch software) that will synch it. If you aren't doing any backups now, then a synch every couple of weeks will be light years better than what you have now. I have 160GB of data and it takes about 10-20mins to do full synch. I usually do it just before I have dinner or similar.

Its just so much easier to manage that amount of data on HD's. The odds of both disks failing are slim. Whats more likely is the PC and ext disk being robbed in a break in. For that reason I have a 3rd disk hidden away with a less regular backup on it. I also use some encrypted partitions on my disks for some stuff like docs etc.

DVDR's would be a pain for large amounts of data and personally I had enough bad CDR's and DVDR's not to rely on them solely either. I do back up some critical stuff to DVD's aswell. But that tends to be archival stuff rather then everydata data. Primarily to declutter my HD's.

 

[kwitel]

is there a particular brand of ExHD that you guys recommend, and what software do you use to synch?
Also, dont they degarde over time?
Do you know if Nero can synch for you?

 

[pedxing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwitel is there a particular brand of ExHD that you guys recommend, and what software do you use to synch? Also, dont they degarde over time? Do you know if Nero can synch for you?

Hard drives do degrade over time. I wouldn't worry about it because it would take a long long long time. The magnetic particles on the platter will affect each others' magnetic fields over time, neutrallizing the encoded data. This is one of the challenges perpindicular writing had to overcome.

To put it into another perspective, you can low-level format your drive like a 100 times and a hard drive specialist can still recover some or all of your data with special equipment. The only way to guarantee the destruction of data is to melt the platters into slag.

 

[kwitel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedxing Hard drives do degrade over time. I wouldn't worry about it because it would take a long long long time. The magnetic particles on the platter will affect each others' magnetic fields over time, neutrallizing the encoded data. This is one of the challenges perpindicular writing had to overcome. To put it into another perspective, you can low-level format your drive like a 100 times and a hard drive specialist can still recover some or all of your data with special equipment. The only way to guarantee the destruction of data is to melt the platters into slag.

Do you recommend a certain brand?
By the way, im right on your heels as far as posts go

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