| Home | “The ABS software works in the background, and is constantly checking to make sure that the backup hard drive is always identical to the main hard drive.” |
There are two kinds of hard drives in this world: Those that have crashed and those that are going to crash.
This is obviously true, because every mechanical thing in this world fails eventually. To make the average desktop computer user even more vulnerable are the hundreds of viruses which are currently “out there.”
I’ve been using personal computers ever since 1977, when the Apple II, the Commodore Pet, and the Radio Shack TRS-80 first came out. Over the years, I’ve experienced many types of hard drive and tape backup failures.
One time, even though I’d been religiously backing up my hard drive onto tape, after the hard drive crashed I found out that most of my hard drive data never actually got backed up to any of the tapes!
Another time, I needed more hard drive space in order to work on some audio editing, so I backed up 8000 files onto tape and then deleted them. I no longer remember exactly why, but for some reason, I was never able to read that tape, so all 8000 files were lost!
The best solution to the above problem is to do a backup to an uncompressed CD-R disk at least once a week, and to use two hard drives, one an exact copy of the other. A mirror backup program such as “Abatus Mirror Server v1.1.0”
(http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,0011DI,.html) is ideal. Then, every time you save a file, it is automatically copied to the second hard drive. The ABS software works in the background, and is constantly checking to make sure that the backup hard drive is always identical to the main hard drive. Since hard drives are very inexpensive nowadays, there is no excuse for not implementing a system such as this.
I would also recommend making both hard drives removable, and to swap them approximately once a week just to make sure that the backup hard drive actually works!
Another feature of “the world’s best desktop computer” would be that it has a DVD drive and a CD-ROM writer. Some software, such as Microsoft Encarta, now come on DVD disks. It’s also nice to be able to play DVD movies. Having two CD-ROM drives will allow you to make a copy of a CD-ROM without having to swap the original and the copy.
In addition to having a backup hard drive, important folders which you have created yourself, such as “My Documents,” “Desktop,” “Start Menu,” “Fonts,” etc. should be copied to a CD-R. This should be done at least once a week. These CD-ROMs should then be carefully labeled and kept “permanently.”
Since each removable hard drive takes up a 5¼" drive bay, and the DVD drive and CD-ROM writer take up another two 5¼" drive bays, this means that “the world’s best desktop computer” must have at least four drive bays, and preferably five, so that a sound card such as the “Sound Blaster Live Platinum” can be installed. This means that a full size tower case is required.
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