Re: Off topic: CD-R | Backup

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:

> >I'm going to need some kind of high-capacity removable media drive for my
>
> This may not be an all-purpose solution, but I have had good success with
> using a spare hard drive for "high-capacity removable media drive." It's
> removable in the sense that you can fairly easily either: 1. attach it and
> detach it physically from the inside of a desktop (does require shutting
> down and restarting), or 2. connect it to a USB enclosure, or 3. connect it
> to a firewire enclosure. There is even a parallel port enclosure, but I
> gave up on it as too slow and somewhat flakey.
>
> Harry Binswanger
> hb@xxxxxxxxxxxx

I've never had a hard drive die on me thus far (and my system runs 24/7, unless
I go
out of town). Still, the possibility of some massive failure remains in my
thoughts.
Beyond any data loss, rebuilding what you had before (opsys times ?, installed
app.s,
the myriad of settings and preferences) would be a daunting and time-consuming
task,
without an adequate backup plan.  And whatever your backups may be, they are
best
kept *off-site.*

You can also have a system with slide-out hard drive trays, such as those from
Lian-Li.
This has all kinds of back-up and redundancy implications, plus the ability to
shuttle
between operating systems, for anyone who had some reasons against going with
_one_
multi-boot system. I decided against this tray H/D option, on my last system
rebuild.
But lately I've been thinking about cloning hard drives (which are fairly cheap
now),
and having some sort of backup box. If I do that, I'll probably opt for the
drive trays.

Jordan