Mark Benson writes: >On Friday, Sep 13, 2002, at 13:03 Europe/London, Albert D'Amanda wrote: > >> On Thursday, September 12, 2002, at 08:20 PM, Ryan Coleman wrote: >> >>> I don't understand everyone's need for a second hard drive. Just >>> partition 1 GB off the 36 GB drive for 8.6 >> >> What happens if the hard drive "goes south"? >> You loose everything! > >In that case you/they would be better off investing in a CD-RW drive, >probably a FireWire one, to backup sensitive information.
I'm coming in way late on this thread.... I respectfully disagree. CD-R and CD-RW are hellspawn formats that offer low cost, moderate capacity, long term stability, and sluggish performance. Although they can be used for backup, they are slow and time intensive. My suggestion: Use an honest to God random access medium instead. Even an ancient Zip 100 is worlds faster than burning a CD. Best choice for backup: Retrospect over a network. Next best: Retrospect on your computer. Backup to tape (ouch, very costly) or -- the best idea in my opinion -- removable hard drives. Compared with the cost of a high capacity tape drive and a few tapes, a mechanism that accepts removable hard drives or simply dropping inexpensive 10-40 GB IDE drives into an external FireWire enclosure (as you fill each one) is a much better way to do backup than CDs. For lower capacity, look at things like MO drives. Because these are true random access devices designed for data storage, they are much faster than CD, more compact, and easier to work with. For still lower capacity, Zip 100, 250, and 750 drives will still outperform CDs, although they offer no real benefit in terms of data capacity. CD burning can be a good way to archive projects, but it's a terribly inefficient system for making daily or casual backups. -- Dan Knight, president /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Cobweb Publishing, Inc. \ / No HTML/RTF in email http://cobwebpublishing.com X No Word docs in email / \ Respect Open Standards! <http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9910/27.deb.shtml> -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
