Learned a valuable lesson today -> always backup important stuff!

[mikeofaustin]

i didn't lose everything, but still a lot, when my 2 year old seagate 500GB hard drive took a dump today. I'm now doing daily backups to my offsite FTP server.

I've always thought that drives are very stable these days, but it's that 1% chance that will make you wish you had done otherwise.

If you don't have an offsite server, get a dedicated USB external drive, and some software that's fully transparent and will backup automatically for you.

 

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[Treasure_Hunter]

I use a Raid system (Raid 1) to back up my data, it is process of mirroring your hard drives. Each of my drives are mirrored in pairs, one drive has the exact same data as the other, when something is saved it is saved on both drives at the same time. This also helps the pc run faster as it has 2 sources to draw the data from....

I have 4 640 gig hard drives in 2 mirrored arrays on my main pc.

Volume 0 is made up of 2 640 gig Western Digital drives mirrored one for one. I have a 100 gig partition on it (with just my operating system on it C: drive) and the rest of drive (D: drive) contains the programs on the remaining 540 gigs. If something happens to my c: drive I only have to reload c: drive, nothing else was lost, or has to be reloaded......

Volume 1 (G: Drive) is made up of 2 640 gig Western Digital drives mirrored one for one containing my data, pictures, and my gaming.....

If one hard drive crashes, I still have another hard drive with all my data still in tact. I just replace the bad drive and data is then copied from one half of the mirrored drive to the other.....No data is ever lost.....

I have the option to add another hard drive to either or both if I wish to make it a 3 drive array... This works great for me...

 

[mikeofaustin]

I use a Raid system (Raid 1) to back up my data, it is process of mirroring your hard drives. Each of my drives are mirrored in pairs, one drive has the exact same data as the other, when something is saved it is saved on both drives at the same time. This also helps the pc run faster as it has 2 sources to draw the data from....

I have 4 640 gig hard drives in 2 mirrored arrays on my main pc.

Volume 0 is made up of 2 640 gig Western Digital drives mirrored one for one. I have a 100 gig partition on it (with just my operating system on it C: drive) and the rest of drive (D: drive) contains the programs on the remaining 540 gigs. If something happens to my c: drive I only have to reload c: drive, nothing else was lost, or has to be reloaded......

Volume 1 (G: Drive) is made up of 2 640 gig Western Digital drives mirrored one for one containing my data, pictures, and my gaming.....

If one hard drive crashes, I still have another hard drive with all my data still in tact. I just replace the bad drive and data is then copied from one half of the mirrored drive to the other.....No data is ever lost.....

I have the option to add another hard drive to either or both if I wish to make it a 3 drive array... This works great for me...

My box has the option to raid two drives, but since I started looking at external USB drives long ago, I though I might go that route. In the mean time, I'll just backup work stuff to external FTP.

I actually have an intel blade server [2u rack mount] sitting in the other room on the floor unplugged, but I havn't done anything with it yet.... Probably because the fan noise and the energy required.

At one point long ago, I did some linux media server stuff... then migrated to a micro-atx server (with a 16GB flash card for the operating system - pure solid state) for the power savings... But, linux hasn't caught up to the technology yet in that micro-atx board for the video compress/hardware yet (it's supposed to have a video hardware decoding, but the linux community hasn't done it yet). But I still can't wait to get 25 watts from a server plugged in 24/7 when it does happen.

One thing I failed to look at was the 16GB flash (had a flash to SATA conversion card), was that flash card manufacturers lie about their access speeds. I will never buy a no-name brand again that promises 133MB/s.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I actually have an intel blade server [2u rack mount] sitting in the other room on the floor unplugged, but I having done anything with it yet.... Probably because the fan noise and the energy required.

I bet the fans do make a little noise. I have 5 fans on my pc, one is 120mm fan on top, but it is still fairly quite even with all the fans....It sucks to lose a drive. I had one crash years ago where I lost all data, that was when I started using Raid 1, I use to back everyting up on disks, but that got to be way too much work......I also have an external hard drive that I back up my most important data and pictures on, as well as I keep a copy of all pictures on the net too.

I also use Yahoo to store info....In my opinion Yahoo is the best free storage there is. I store a lot in the notepad, and also in format as emails drafts............Multiple back up when you consider the mirror drives, external drive, 8 gig flash drive stick, Net, and yahoo..........

Good luck...............