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 2)

DJBandit

on Aug 01, 2006

Wow, I only moved up to 200 gigs about a year ago. That's a lot of space for such a small planet.

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

I think if I ever lost all my files, jumping off a building would be less painful.

I already had that happen to me. Once upon a time I learned that having partitions would save you from having to constantly recopy all my music files back to the PC everytime I reinstalled Windows. I, however, made the mistake of forcing Windows 2000 to recognize a 200 GB hard drive when it only saw 132 GB. This eventually created a feed back everytime Windows 2000 wanted to see only 132 GB but was forced to see 200 GB instead until it crashed. I then proceeded to reinstall Windows 2000 only to realize that the partition with all my music, software, pictures, saved games and some movies was gone. I almost lost my mind that day. I felt almost like I had lost a family member, my music was my pride, my pictures were my history, my softwares were my life, my saved games were my hard work and my movies, well they were mine.

I was however lucky to have had 98% of my music on CDs that I was going to dispose of, I could have always DL the ones I was missing again. Most of my pictures were also on CDs but those that weren't are now lost for ever, I'm almost crying now. I managed to get most of the software back from the internet, but my saved games were gone with the wind. I also lost a lot of files for games like Simcity 3000 that I will never be able to get again. Oh well, I'm still here, I survived, heart broken but getting better.

I eventually moved to Windows XP and problem solved. I will get a backup hard drive soon to avoid this again.

Oh yea, my opinion, you can never have enough space or drives; unless your system is limited.

Sea Hourse

on Aug 02, 2006

Memory space is like money. You can never have too much but you definitely notice it when you don't have enough.

I have an 80, a 120, and a 160. I need more space. And speaking of time.... It takes my virus system, AVG Pro, about 1 hour to scan everything. And it takes exactly 9 hours to do a complete reformat of the 120. That's not fun waiting for it to finish.

There are a number of online sites offering very cheap, even free, storage space for your files. Here's a site that starts with 25GB free, $5 for 100, and on up from there. Link

Cyong_

on Sep 13, 2006

dude, i am responsible for aproximatley 30 terabytes (30,000 gigs+) of data, as long as you dont have four of

WWW Link

in your home/office, you are alright.

Gideon MacLeish

on Sep 17, 2006

dude, i am responsible for aproximatley 30 terabytes (30,000 gigs+) of data, as long as you dont have four of

WWW Link

in your home/office, you are alright.

SWEEEETTTT!!!

I got to see a pretty nasty server setup for a Fortune 500 company this past week!

UBoB

on Sep 17, 2006

To answer the title question, two hundred and seven.

Xythe

on Sep 17, 2006

Ummm, RAM (memory) and disk storage (hard drive)is not the same.

At the very least, data stored in RAM is volitile while data on your hard disk is not.

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