The real problem is a system that's not very secure.

You need help.

CN


"JG" wrote in message ...
Right. I'm using SATA also. Four 250 gig drives. Two sets of RAID 1. One
mirrored to the second. Does nothing or infections of course, but I run
fairly extensive and redundant checks on that stuff. Then, as a final backup
scheme, I back up to DVD on a monthly basis. So far, I have three separate
HD crashes and never dropped a digit. The only clue that I had that
something was wrong was the system became sluggish. When I rebooted, I saw
the problem. Now, I've set up alerts to tell me when something critical
happens.

One could also use a system like Xdrive, but I find it clumsy and slow.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Lonny Bruce" wrote in message
news:IoKNd.13047$Dc.10231@trnddc06...
Agreed.

And beyond that, an arguement could be made that with 4 hard drives I am 4
times as likely to experience a hard drive failure.

Still, one hard drive will fail before the others will. When it fails, it
can be replaced, and the data rebuilt before the next one fails. BTW, I
am using 10,000 RPMs and SATA, not PATA, so I enjoy faster transfers, with
8 MB cache, as opposed to 1 MB cache used with most PATA hard drives.

With any RAID array, backups are still needed. The best kind are off
site, so as to protect against common accidents, such as lightening
strikes, fires, etc. Certainly using an external hard drive (which is
also what I do with a cute little 2.5" 40 GB USB hard drive) is better
than nothing, but off site is the best.

Thumb drives are a great invention. Because someone can use it for a
backup, at say a work computer, and then put it in their pocket, or their
purse, and will leave the premises with the backup.

Lonny


"Edgar" wrote in message
...

Lonny Bruce wrote in message
newsOJNd.22763$uc.20667@trnddc03...
I've got a complete mirror of my
system on an alternate HD.


All that means is that if you have RAID 0 you won't know which hard
drive
has been infected, and if you have RAID 1 then both hard drives will be
infected. A RAID array does nothing to protect you against worms or
viruses, only hard drive failures, and a RAID 0 array won't even protect
you
against that. In fact a RAID 0 increases the chances that you will have
a
mechanical failure at some point.

My computer is set up with both RAID 0 and RAID 1 (RAID 1+0) so that I
get
the benefits of boths types of systems. The two hard drives set up in
RAID
0 speed up all reading and writing functions, so opening programs takes
half
the time, writing or reading data takes half the time. Then I have two
more
hard drives in a RAID 1 array, automatically backing up everything that
happens in the RAID 0 array. For a total of 4 120GB hard drives. (240
GB
storage capacity, plus a complete backup).

Lonny

But this means that you have four large hard drives always running at
7200
rpm and therefore destined ultimately to all wear out at approximately
the
same time, so your backup is going to be vulnerable at the same time as
the
operating disks.
To avoid this problem I back up periodically on a USB external hard
drive,
which on the days I am not using it is disconnected and therefore does
not
wear. I expect you will point out that the mean time between failures of
a
modern disk is very long, but it is certainly finite, and if you leave
your
machine on for long periods the hours soon mount up.