Re: off-topic: scheduled backup to external hard drive

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

At 12:32 AM 4/4/06 -0400, Harry Binswanger wrote:
>
>>I think Harry is basically right, but why not open the case and leave the
>>hard drive inside? (I didn't have a convenient mount, so I held the hard
>>drive down with bent coat hanger wire and paper clips.)
>
>Because for each backup, you have to put on the cables, then take them off
>when you're done (rebooting in between, of course), and you don't want to
>have to open the case to do that.

Why disconnect the cables?

Before you plug or unplug the ribbon cable and power cable, you have to
turn the power off. According to Murphy's Law, you will eventually forget
to turn the power off.

Murphy's law worked for me. I was backing up a hard drive as a Ghost backup
onto another hard drive. From a floppy disk, Ghost exits to DOS. I saw a
black screen and I assumed the power was off. It wasn't. (I didn't see the
little C:> prompt at the bottom.) I plugged in the power cable, and I I saw
sparks. (You know the horrible feeling.) The hard drive and power supply
didn't work any more. Fortunately it was one of my old Win98 computers that
I was using specifically to make mistakes on.

OK, maybe you want to keep the HD in a separate place, because somebody who
doesn't know the value of a Win98 computer might steal it, or the house
might burn down. But you need to back up on 2 separate media anyway,
probably CD-RW for the 2nd, so you could keep the CDs in a separate location.

So one backup strategy would be, use a batch file to copy the data files to
the D: drive, then use Nero or something to copy the data files to a CD.

The nice thing about XyWrite is that I can save 20 years of writing in
<85MB. If it wasn't for the privacy issue, I would create a zipped file and
mail it to my Gmail account. (According to Slashdot, Google recently
complied with a subpoena for somebody's deleted mail in a FTC fraud case.)

Norman

-------------------------------------------------------
Norman Bauman
411 W. 54 St. Apt. 2D
New York, NY 10019
(212) 977-3223
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman
Alternate address: nbauman@xxxxxxxx
-------------------------------------------------------