Biennial Crash Testing

[Guy Beall]

Yeah, a JAZ drive is nice, but a little too pricey for just doing back ups.
On the other hand a good second hard drive would probably work wonders. You
could do your back ups to it, and/or also just save your important data over
on it, that way in case of a crash you always have that info. I do that
here, I have my mail file on my server, so that no matter how many times I
redo my machine I just point my email software at the file and there it all
is.

As a matter of fact I just had to redo my machine (Win98), was starting to
act a little flaky, that and I couldn't get a new game to run.(still can't)
Point is, that we have found that with constant (ab)use a system will need
to be wiped and redone about once a year, just to keep things running all
nice.

Well there's my two cents, I'll go now.

Guy

> The real solution is not to invest in a new platform just because you're
> afraid that the old one is crashing too much, but rather to
> invest in backup
> hardware, and then proceed to actually use it religiously.  Something like
> a Jaz drive can be had quite cheaply, as these things go, and has
> removable
> 2G cartridges.  Ideally, you dump your life to it once a week,
> and start the
> morning out each day with a refreshing snapshot of changes over
> the last 24
> hours.  (Using real backup software, not the stuff that comes
> with windows.)
>
> There's also, if you've got the online access to handle it, which usually
> requires a flat rate plan, several interesting online solutions,
> where for a
> monthly fee, their software will scavange your disk for changes, encrypt
> and compress it, and upload it to a highly redundant server somewhere in
> the world, which can return it to you on demand.  I've been considering
> switching to one of those services with my laptop since I'm fairly often
> on a lan, with good connectivity.
>