Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: "Unknown" <unknown@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:09:17 -0500
Response inline! Think in terms of the average home user.
"Twayne" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23l61a9N9JHA.1336@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Terry R." <F1Com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OWgKWNF9JHA.4560@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The date and time was Tuesday, June 23, 2009 12:01:24 PM, and on a
whim, Ken Blake, MVP pounded out on the keyboard:
On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:17:48 -0700, "Terry R."
<F1Com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The date and time was Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:14:50 AM, and on a
whim, Ken Blake, MVP pounded out on the keyboard:
On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:09:08 +0100, "RJK" <nosuch@xxxxxxxxxxx>I have to disagree with your suggestion *not* to backup to an
wrote:
Just Norton Ghost backed up my boot drive C:\ (17gb's occupied),
and data only drive D:\ (49gb's occupied),
...onto third hd drive E:\ and whilst watching the 1gb files,
(for some strange reason I like to Norton Ghost BU into 1gb
chunks), appear in the destination directory on drive E:\ ...I
timed a few of them as they appeared, and they were taking 20
seconds to each appear. So, backing up C:\ and D:\ drives took
about 17 minutes, or about 20 seconds a 1gb file. Should I be
happy with that ? ...any way to speed it up other than replacing
innards -
Two points:
1. For most people, how long a backup takes doesn't matter at all.
Do it at night, and it will almost always be done when you get up
in the morning.
2. I strongly recommend that you do *not* do your backup to an
internal hard drive, but rather use an external drive that is not
kept connected. What you are doing leaves you susceptible to
simultaneous loss of the original and backup drive to many of the
most common dangers, which include severe power glitches, nearby
lightning strikes, virus attacks, and even theft of the computer.
You might want to read this article I've written on backup: "Back
Up Your Computer Regularly and Reliably" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314
internal drive. I have 3 hard drives on this workstation. Between
the 3, I have multiple backups of my OS partitions, and programs
drive. My data drive is backed up each day to another internal
drive. I also have 3 external drives that I create monthly backups
with multiple versions.
Your choice, of course. I completely disagree with your point of
view, and I will continue to recommend that backups be done to
external drives rather than internal ones.
I guess you have never run into either of the issues below then, or
you would realize the risks of "common dangers" is less than the
frequency of forgetfulness by users to either not plug in the
external drive and perform a backup AND verify it, or leave it
running until it dies altogether, again without ever checking.
1. IMO externals SHOULD be connected and up anytime the computer is ON.
What on earth for? Why not power on when needed.
2. Backups can be scheduled; because it's an external drive makes zero
difference to the schedulers that run the backups.
They can be scheduled but it gives a good feeling when the backup is done
after running error free. Less chance of backing up a virus.
3. Backups should seldom be MANUAL! My backup app peforms ALL backup
functions, including monitoring for a data increase in excess of over 250
Meg on any drive, and runs an incremental whenever that happens.
Why? No reason to not do a manual backup.
4. In an almost ideal situation, backups are never wasting space on any
internal drive. Backup drives should be large enough to contain multiple
copies of backups in case one happens to include some sort of malware
Why isn't it wasted space? If you have a good external backup drive the
internal is wasted space. Remember ---average home user..
5. In an almost ideal situation, there are multiple external drives or a
dedicated housing for external drives. Drives are switched in/out on a
predetermined schedule. Drives not on duty are powered down and
physically disconnected while they are idle and only the needed drive is
powered and physically connected. All automated. User never does
anything about backups; it's done for them.
This is for corporations not home users. I might add my experience is that
the backups were done manually at the end of the day. (MY experience only)
6. Anyone in charge of backups who doesn't monitor the state of the
backups OFTEN shouldn't be in charge of them. Anyone making people
perform manual backups is asking for trouble no matter how you look at it,
if their data is really "irreplaceable" AND of great imortance to them. I
have a lot of "irreplaceable" data backed up, not all of it critical
though. In fact, some of it I'd never miss, but it still couldn't be
replaced. Backups need to be constantly verified at least visually and
periodically by testing.
I will continue to offer what I think is best to the client and let
them choose. Almost every individual client has opted for the
additional internal drive when the pros and cons of both have been
presented. That's why networks store info off the workstations and
use tape backups to minimize human error.
If you're giving that advice to clients, you are short-changing them. Tape
backups are nothing but removable media, which in more up to date sysems
is now changed to DVD media.
Read the 2nd paragraph below. That user had an external drive. Did
he ever use it? Unfortunately, no. When he had a Windows laptop,
whenever he was onsite our backup implementation performed the backup
for him. Now he's offsite more than onsite, and it was left up to him.
Bad policy. If that's an employee, he needs to be reprimanded and warned,
with a follow-thru. The laptop belongs to the company, not the employee in
any kind of situation that makes sense. And the company can require
anything they please of it.
Actually IME most travel machines are used for nothing but e-mail,
demoes and shows anyway, not to carry important data. Training needs to
be part of the plan; not a few verbal requests.
You can't do anything about backups for anyone you have no control over.
But you sure can for the ones you do. And your own, of course.
HTH,
Twayne`
Depending on how valuable ones data is, telling them to only use an
external drive is putting the worst link between backing up; the
user. If someone fails to back up important data every day
because they forgot to plug in the external drive, that is worse
than the risk of losing all internal drives to your "common
dangers". I would rather take that risk than putting the onus on
the user to make sure they back up. OR the other big failure: users
leaving the external drive plugged in (which most are not
designed to do)- the drive fails and the user never checks their
backups. They just *assume* it's being done. I have a LOT of
failed USB drives here from exactly that. I have one owner of a network
I admin who just lost his 3rd drive
on his Mac Book. He didn't heed my warnings to make sure his
backups were being done, and never responded to my requests to come
to his home to check it. Now it's going to cost $1,500 to replace
a head on the failed drive to retrieve his data. Maybe now he'll
take backup seriously. The best way is a combination of both IMO. Of
course I consider my
data irreplaceable.
Terry R.
--
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Terry R.
.
- References:
- OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: RJK
- Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: Ken Blake, MVP
- Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: Terry R.
- Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: Ken Blake, MVP
- Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: Terry R.
- Re: OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
- From: Twayne
- OT: Hardware speed gen. Q. ?
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