Re: Backup hard drive

[ag471@yfn.ysu.edu (Eric S. Ford)]

In a previous article, flash@pro-applejacks.cts.com (Glenn Koproske) says:

>lee@pro-novapple.clark.net (Lee Raesly) writes:
>
>>And if you get a Hard Drive, it's ONLY advatage in a business situation is
>>Speed, NOT Storage. NEVER BACK UP A HARD DRIVE!!!!

And real men don't wear seat belts, either!

>>If your HD crashes, you must either get it repaired, or buy a new one,
>>before you can restore your backup.

Yeah, so?  Backups can be restored to a new drive even if it's different sized.

>Naaaah.  Speed is important, but hard drives are the sole storage media in
>businesses.  Floppies are still unreliable and are only useful for sneakernet.
>
>As for backing up, it is very seldom if ever that a hard drive crashes. 

Having just gone through three crashes on two different disks, I disagree.  It
seems Syquest removeable harddrives have a nasty reputation for crashing.  
They are particularly susceptible if the users forget to remove the carts
before moving the drives around.  Having had backups (even though these were
on floppy and not on tape) made the restoration process much less painful.

>Where our tape backups come into play on a regular basis is either when a
>user deletes something and needs it back, or if they have to set things back
>a week or a month or a quarter and re-run a business process to generate new
>numbers.  A tape is the slickest way to do this.

Probably not cost effective for the home user unless he has a tremendous
drive and a very cautious nature.


-- 
Eric S. Ford    ag471@yfn.ysu.edu