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You have a computer backup plan.. but does it work?

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MilesAhead:
One thing I was wondering about concerning the rack... aren't the new drives like WD Caviar Black etc, designed to be mounted vertically?  Does it mess them up to be running mounted in a horizontal position?  I'm thinking the power down landing zone bit might not work as designed if the thing is running flat?

Paul Keith:
Thanks Miles.

I don't suppose there's a way to check the md5 while the image is overwriting an older image? These image backups are huge. I don't have an external HD that has triple the space of the current HD.

New question:

Is the HD rack for servers only that requires some advanced tinkering only for power users?

I asked my mom who is working on a tech-related company to inquire about where to locally buy these racks but the person she asked told her it was for servers only and is very expensive.

mouser:
Is the HD rack for servers only that requires some advanced tinkering only for power users?
--- End quote ---

absolutely not -- we are talking about hard drive racks, which as you can see from the newegg links above are about $25.

they require no skill beyond that required to install a new hard drive or cdrom drive in your computer.

instead of hooking up a hard drive, you hook up the rack instead, which is the size of an old larger 5.25 half-height drive (exact size of a cd/dvd drive). then the normal hard drive slides into that.

as Miles points out, the only thing you have to make sure is that you have an open bay in your case -- something that would fit a cd burner.

MilesAhead:
Thanks Miles.

I don't suppose there's a way to check the md5 while the image is overwriting an older image? These image backups are huge. I don't have an external HD that has triple the space of the current HD.
-Paul Keith (October 23, 2009, 01:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

I tend to run with 70% or higher free space on my system drive.  20 GB after compression is typical of my Macrium Reflect image file.  What I did was buy a USB docking station, then I got a couple of 750 GB Caviar Black on sale.  I swap the drives.  Also I made a partition on each drive for just the backup images.  That way I don't have to spend hours defragging. Just delete all the backups in the partition(the other drive is in a box with recent backups, so I delete the backups on the drive with the oldest backups to "defrag" the partition on that drive.) I also have a couple of USB externals I got before the docking station thing was popular.  I do some backups there too in case the docking station breaks.


For larger saves you may need to invest in some multi-TB drives.

tomos:
These image backups are huge. I don't have an external HD that has triple the space of the current HD.
-Paul Keith (October 23, 2009, 01:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

Using a backup software that compresses backups and can do incremental backups:
I just checked & have 3 full backups and 14 incremental backups (so you could really call that 17 backups) - they take up 30GB space.

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