The only thing on my iMac internal 320 gig HD is the OS, Apps, and user related files (downloads, etc). That drive is backed up hourly by Time Machine to a Firewire 1 TB drive, which also contains my iTunes library (54,000 songs).
Master images are all located on an external 500 gig USB HD. Those images only are copied to an external USB 300 gig drive once a month by Retrospect. The drive is only powered up for that copy (if I remember to turn it on when iCal reminds me!) and kept in my car otherwise. The most important contents of the internal HD, the 1 TB drive, and that of two external USB 500 gig drives, one of which contains the master images, is backed up using Apple's Back Up program every night to yet another USB 500 gig drive. And finally, my master images, iTunes, my user files, and other difficult to replace/reconfigure files are all backed up once a week using Retrospect to the internal 1 TB drive in a G4 dual 1 gig Quicksilver that is located elsewhere in the house I use just for that purpose. It's all so very confusing! But the cross/backups give me a great deal of confidence that I can recover from most any disaster, as was recently the case when my brand new iMac had to be replaced because of a faulty screen. As it was a "custom" configured unit from the factory, the local store could not replace it, and a new one had to be flown in from Taiwan (2 days to assemble and deliver to Seattle). I then had to "restore" everything on it's internal 320 gig from my Time Machine backup off the 1 TB external. All went smoothly. As an aside, did you know that to affect repairs on anything except the memory within the current iMacs, you must use a couple of window installation suction cups to remove the lucite cover from the front to get at the screws that hold the LCD screen in, so you can get to the logic board, hard drive, or optical drive located behind. And from what I'm told by Apple, even the Apple Stores don't like to do it, because re-assembling all that without getting a speck of dust either on the LCD or the interior of the lucite is very tedious, and really begs for a clean room environment. That's certainly a long way from the "old days" when one could perform just about any mod, upgrade or repair on their Apple ][, Macintosh, or PC with a screwdriver and a wrist strap! Joe On Jul 23, 2008, at 1:15 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I use an extertal hdd with an isolated power supply to help > prevent surge damage to the drive and keep the power switch > on the ext. drive off except only when transferring data. > Never trust a single drive or second drive on the same system. > If you get a bad lightning stike or some other power failure > you may need to get expensive data recovery off the disk if > possible or you may get permanent data loss... -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
