How many Harddrives is TOO many?

Published on July 31, 2006 By Jafo In PC Hardware

Over the last few weeks my main 'backup' drive [a 160gig PATA] started to show signs of ageing ....the odd noise...the odd error about being 'unable to erite' [though it had]...so I thought it wise to get a replacement.

Yesterday I installed a 320gig WD SATA [16meg cache] to swap everything from the potentially ailing drive...and left a proggy called 'Syncback' to handle it overnight...[about 130gig in 330,000+ files].

This morning I checked the log and there were 12 files that failed to backup...so I ran it again for those....and now there were 2. Manual copy attempts also failed on these...'invalid dos command' or some such...the implication was/is they were corrupted - bad crc, whatever....neither was critical.

I'll schedule the backup to backup to the new backup once a week, leaving the iffy drive 'in the loop' for now.

But...

Doing a count I find I have now 870gig in 5 physical Harddrives [7 if you count partitions].

My system, if you include the PCI IDE card and ignore the SATA Raid can handle 8 PATA and 2 SATA drives, and if you count the CD/DVD drives has 5 PATA and 2 SATA.

2 of the PATA drives are small 80 and 60, and each has a 20 gig primary partition so both can be OS drives [one an image of the other] and each in removable caddies for quick recovery in the event of an OS going gaga.

So...the OS is backed up in a working state...

Once a week Drive Image 7 is scheduled to make a new image of the Primary...and that's stored on a third drive, and that too is backed via Syncback to a fourth [actually a partition on the second].

The great advantage of all these secondary OS drives, etc is that the 'proggy files' such as games and office data, etc are on neither of them but on the third drive [which is now redundancy-backed to the fifth [new] one in its entirety.

Now, with XP Pro and its product activation, etc about the only thing that can screw up all this 'protection' is a hardware failure requiring a new MoBo, etc and thus a new OS Install....

Unless...

I get myself a backup/spare of the 'same' MoBo and Processor as I'm using now.....just in case....

Or is THAT too much of 'The Irishman wearing 2 condoms - to be sure to be sure'....

Comments (Page 1)

Nakor

on Jul 31, 2006

Or a nice power surge frying everything. Think about a cheapo box with some other backups that isn't always on.

aimzzz

on Jul 31, 2006

You probably have enough drive space to run the country of Australia.

Remember when a 1MB drive was HUGE?

Skinhit

on Jul 31, 2006

You probably have enough drive space to run the country of Australia.

Corky_O

on Jul 31, 2006

You're giving me a headache, Jafo....

For my part, I use an external USB drive to hold Ghost images of the drives.

On the notebook, I run one drive with one primary partition.

On the former Desktop, I ran one master drive with one partition for the OS and programs, and one slave drive for holding all images, music, etc. - with all important images, music, etc on DVD backups.

The new desktop (next year) will have two SATA drives (one for the OS and programs, and one for the images, music, etc.

I could see going with a second external USB hard drive (perhaps a 500 GB) to hold all image, music, etc. backups.

I am going to go with "too much of 'The Irishman wearing 2 condoms - to be sure to be sure'...." on the MoBo / Processor duplicate though...

DesignCaddy

on Aug 01, 2006

i used to keep my program files on one drive and the docs on another but it wasn't so easy to back up.. not with windows' own backup.

i simplified.. one large c drive to hold program files and my documents ( active projects, music, video, docs )... d drive is for swap files, cache files, virtual memory. e is a usb external, holds one care synced 'my documents'. f is my project archive drive, another usb external. i have another usb external to redundant backup my archive, and if i find another drive lying around ill throw it in another usb case and make it for recordable tv.

thebleedingedge

on Aug 01, 2006

Wow! I didn't think anyone else was running that much for storage except me. I am currently running 1.7 Tb over 7 hard drives. It's a real pain ti manage all of it. Fortunitly I have had very few corrupt HD. I think if I ever lost all my files, jumping off a building would be less painful.

basj

on Aug 01, 2006

oh my......

basj

on Aug 01, 2006

err...btw how long does it takes you guys to run entire system scan for virus? A months?

thebleedingedge

on Aug 01, 2006

Actually I ran a virus check the other day over all theHD's. Surprisingly it only took 40 minutes. The real pain is when a drive becomes really fragmented, or transferring massive amounts of files. I just transferred 250 gb to anher dive and it took slightly over an hour. I really wonder sometimes if it's worth running that much disk space.

Cavan1

on Aug 01, 2006

Actually I ran a virus check the other day over all theHD's. Surprisingly it only took 40 minutes.

What AV are you using, a virus scan (McAfee) takes about an hour for me, 40gb HD, 70% free space. Hec, Windows Defender takes about 1 1/2 hours.

drej16

on Aug 01, 2006

I guess that depends upon how paranoid you are,

or how valuable you consider the data contained within.

I have just over 3 TB usable space on a Samba share that is running a raid 5 configuration with hot swappable SCSI drives. I have all my documents, images, mp3’s, movies, programs and other important stuff that I just hate to have to reinstall, this includes a few of the relevant registry entries so that I don’t have to reinstall the entire application if my PC dies.

I have determined that there are a few program licenses/file/configurations that I don't wish to ever loose, if at all possible, those I have copied to a couple of optical disks that are stored in a couple of different locations. Also, every 6 months, I take a tape backup of the system, for this I use a DLT tape drive. At least until I find another method that can actually hold more then that reliably, without costing an arm or a leg.

On hand, I have 2 spare SCSI disks sitting here for the raid units, an extra 80GB ATA drive for my desktop, that is kept up to date with Ghost once a month. Lastly a 73 GB drive for my UNIX system that runs the Samba share. No extra motherboards or memory around, just some miscellaneous outdated PCI cards that I do not use anymore

But, maybe I am a little overly paranoid or maybe I have lost my data once too many times because of a hardware failure or maybe I have been in the computer industry too long dealing with setting up DR processes, procedures and policies or all of it together.

Tominated

on Aug 01, 2006

We only got our pc back yesterday because of HDD failure. Now we have 2 250gb drives in mirroring raid

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thomassen

on Aug 01, 2006

dhuurh... you see, now I'm just paranoid. I felt that having two drives in my comp and an external HD and manually updating when I felt it was needed would be enough.

Lantec

on Aug 01, 2006

I run a 160gb Raid 1 setup on the office server.

I also have a internal tape drive which does incrementals every day and full boat on Fridays.

Attached to it is an external 300gb Maxtor that does a full boat every day and keeps 2 days worth.

On top of that my system has a 240gb drive that I keep a sync'ed set of the servers data directories on (CAD drawings, Office Docs) which runs at startup and shutdown.

Then I do a DVD backup and tote the maxtor home to sync with the home system once a month as well.

It pays to be paranoid.

thebleedingedge

on Aug 01, 2006

What AV are you using, a virus scan (McAfee) takes about an hour for me, 40gb HD, 70% free space. Hec, Windows Defender takes about 1 1/2 hours.

I am using Anti Vir. I have used McAfee and all the others. Anti Vir by far I feel is the best. It's fairly fast. low on memory and best of all it's free. Thr virus definitions update daily and it seems to catch everything.

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