Viktor Nacht: Word of Warning: Your Hard Drive WILL Crash

[Viktor Nacht]

Two prominent authors lost their hard drives this week, both of which contained files pertaining to future RGE products.

I can not emphasize this enough: Your hard drive will fail. It is a 100% inevitability. If you manage to sell or trash your computer without having to change out / reformat the HD at least once, it is nothing more than a fortunate coincidence. And if you run Windows, the value of this assumption increases dramatically due to Viruses and Worms.

Back up your data up at least once a week. I suggest my method, which is to buy two Firewire or USB 2.0 HDs, and backup to them on a rotating basis. Further more, always keep one of the HDs offsite (e.g. somewhere else). I always keep the latest backup offsite, but as long as you have one backup at home, and another somewhere else, you'll be in good shape.

Failure to backup will ruin your life eventually.

Good Bits,

V

[Parker]

The modern hard drive is a marvel of technology. The whole idea that so much data can be stored in such a small space, and retrieved with such precision, in a device that sells for a black chip or less, flat-out boggles my mind.

However, they are mechanical devices. They have lots of moving parts, a motor, bearings, etc. Therefore, they have a life expectancy and WILL eventually wear out and fail.

Quite often, this will happen with absolutely no warning!

I replace the hard drive on my business computer on an annual basis - I just recently finished doing it.

While replacing a hard drive is a lot of work, especially if you like to do a clean OS install (I do), it is far, far easier to do when the old hard drive is still fully functional. If the hard drive in your computer is more than two years old, I would strongly suggest replacing it before it has a chance to fail. Besides, a new hard drive will undoubtedly give you more storage space, and probably a performance increase as well.

Look at your computer right now, and think to yourself, "If this computer were to self-destruct right at this moment, what data would be difficult to replace?"

If everything you can think of is not already backed up somewhere, then you have some work to do.

The external hard drive solution discussed by Viktor is probably the easiest way to do this. These are relatively inexpensive, and often come with user-friendly backup software included. All the recent versions of Windows also include backup programs, although they are not as easy to use as some of the aftermarket products.

The best way to handle backups is to set the backup program to run automatically in the wee hours, when you are asleep. Then you can forget about it. However, be certain to occasionally try to actually restore something, to be certain that the program is working properly!

I also like to burn a CD of all my data files about once a week. This provides a cheap and relatively durable form of backup. I keep a copy of my home system files at my office, and vice-versa.

I have become quite fond of these USB "pen-drive" storage devices, and use these to create yet another form of backup for important projects. If the prominent authors Viktor mentioned had simply done this, they could have saved themselves a great deal of grief.

Besides, having a couple of these clipped to your key ring makes you look incredibly cool. :-)

[Magician]

> However, they are mechanical devices. They
> have lots of moving parts, a motor,
> bearings, etc. Therefore, they have a life
> expectancy and WILL eventually wear out and
> fail.

> ...

> I have become quite fond of these USB
> "pen-drive" storage devices, and
> use these to create yet another form of
> backup for important projects.

Even though these devices don't have any moving parts they can still fail too. I've seen a friends two-month-old pen drive simply fail to operate on multiple machines. Fortunately, they usually come with a decent warranty (two years) but that will not get your data back.

Having said that, these things are about the size of your little finger, can store much more data than a floppy disk (more than a CD or DVD if you spend enough) and are almost as compatible. They generally work on Windows ME/2000/XP and Mac OSX without having to install drivers. They can also be password protected if you want to store sensitive information (such as manuscripts) on them.

> Besides, having a couple of these clipped to
> your key ring makes you look incredibly
> cool. :-)

Well, one can be cool. A couple might be considered geeky. :-)

[Jack Rabbit]

This is definitely a good point to make. I have a dumb question though. Why not install a second hard drive in your desktop box and periodically back one drive up to the other? I realize this does not protect you from fire or other disaster type problems, but you could recover from drive failure with this setup.

Believe me, I know about natural disasters and computers. My wife works for one of the largest computer/information system disaster recovery companies in the world and they have been very busy this hurricane season. And the damn things have consistantly been hitting land on the weekends too!

[paranoid android]

This is a good idea. You could also have the mirroring done automatically if you have a RAID controller.

My method of backup is to simply zip up my important directories and FTP the zip file to my ISP. This is easy and it's offsite in case of fire or theft. Most ISP's allow a reasonable amount of storage on their servers by customers.

> This is definitely a good point to make. I
> have a dumb question though. Why not install
> a second hard drive in your desktop box and
> periodically back one drive up to the other?
> I realize this does not protect you from
> fire or other disaster type problems, but
> you could recover from drive failure with
> this setup.

> Believe me, I know about natural disasters
> and computers. My wife works for one of the
> largest computer/information system disaster
> recovery companies in the world and they
> have been very busy this hurricane season.
> And the damn things have consistantly been
> hitting land on the weekends too!

[Viktor Nacht]

> This is definitely a good point to make. I
> have a dumb question though. Why not install
> a second hard drive in your desktop box and
> periodically back one drive up to the other?
> I realize this does not protect you from
> fire or other disaster type problems,

I think you just asked and answered your own question. Based on how much of our lives have been reduced to data, from our finances to our memories (photos, movies, etc.) to - in some cases - our life's work, an offsite backup is a top ten necessity of modern life, IMO.

For the truly paranoid, backing up to an offsite HD or remote server is still insufficient, since a galactic "dust storm," and nuclear and other upcoming electromagnetic weapons can destroy magnetic data. Therefore you should also periodically burn the most precious of your data to multiple DVD/CD-ROMs, and mail copies to a couple of geographical distant friends and/or relatives while putting your copies in an offsite firebox or safety deposit box.

If you need me, Ill be in the official RGE concrete bunker. Knock 21 times.

Good Cards,

V

[Saboteur]

There are also some diagnostic programs available that monitor your hard disk's operation. I used to own Active SMART (available at ariolic.com for $24.95). It correctly identified an overheating problem and accurately predicted the week that my hard disk would finally crash (and the prediction was made more than two months in advance). That gave me plenty of time to make back-ups of my important stuff. Active SMART analyzes the disk itself, as well as the file-management system.

Seagate also has free diagnostic tools ("SeaTools") for their hard disks available on their site. Other manufacturers probably do, too.

[Viktor Nacht]

Thanks for posting this Saboteur, I thought I had posted a link about SMART hard drive technology, but I guess I didn't. Below is a general link for more information, which also contains links for even more information.

Good Bits,

V

S.M.A.R.T.

[Ivan Mhitarov]

> There are also some diagnostic programs
> available that monitor your hard disk's
> operation. I used to own Active SMART
> (available at ariolic.com for $24.95). It
> correctly identified an overheating problem
> and accurately predicted the week that my
> hard disk would finally crash (and the
> prediction was made more than two months in
> advance).
I'm using Advanced SmartCheck from urltoy.com to monitor all of my 30 networked computers. It collects all SMART attributes and shows it in a single workplace.