I hadn't paid attention to this thread because I thought HD=high definition, not hard drive. I've heard enough about high def. My two cents worth here is that RAID arrays will save your butt. I had hard drives in multiple computers that would clink and kachunk for no good reasons, and didn't know what to save where because I could never find out who the noisemakers were. I said "to hell with the whole thing" and bought a Buffalo Terastation. Its 1 terabyte raw and 700 GB in RAID5 configuration. Since I bought that one, they came out with new models, so they are available from about $450-500 at a minimum price. They use a IP address, and you can access them as mapped local drives from computers once you create the map. I've heard arguments from people who say that's too much money, but they are more than willing to pay more for repeated replacements of USB drives that die.
They are worth their weight in gold. Mike Hawkins Rick Kunath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Walter Salmaniw wrote: > I can't wait for the day that there'll only be terrabyte flash drives out there and we totally do away with rotating hard drives. He gave me the number of a > forensic data recovery service. Someone had scratched on the photocopy, $390 per hour or something like that. This is really so very x$%&@*****!!!! Now what the heck am I supposed to do. I did nothing to this HD to cause it to do this. It was sitting > quietly on my desk and when I came home one day....no light. Wonder > if I should do the deep freeze again. Sure did absolutely nothing for Alex's HD, and the tech says not to....condensation issues, etc. Now what on earth should I do? Suggestions > please!!!!............Walt. Well, it's dead anyway... unless you are sending it off for forensic recovery, not much to lose. Freezing it isn't going to fix a dead onboard controller. Even terrabyte flash will have data loss issues. The simple answer today is that once you get this resolved, setup a RAID array of at *least* 2 drives, preferably 3. Select the correct RAID level, get some advice if you need to on just what is the right industry standard RAID level for you and not proprietary, don't fall for the junk software RAID usually foisted off as RAID on some motherboards today, buy *good* commercial quality hard drives not the consumer stuff that just can't cut it, and then don't worry. If another drive fails, just replace it and the RAID array will take care of the rest. No data loss, no loss in operation. The array will restore itself. I wouldn't have a machine without hardware RAID these days. And most folks have at least 2 drives already. Drives are cheap. Data isn't. With the right motherboard and hardware RAID, this (data loss) isn't really an issue any more. If you want to keep a consumer grade PC on the desk, you could just setup a network server as a file server and use a RAID array in that. Then it (the network file server) would be available for any machine on your network. Store your precious data on the network file server with the RAID hard drive array, and keep just the OS on any clients. That way you won't have any critical data on client PCs and can restore them easily from the OS DVD. As far as the user experience, the network server with the RAID array looks just like another mapped hard drive (or network drive, depending on the OS). Seamlessly integrates into the (any) OS. And stay away from USB hard drives. USB is no way shape or form designed to handle either hard drive data or network data. What's the manufacturer of the actual hard drive itself? Rick Kunath _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
