[Dxbase] Protecting your DXbase investment

Mon Feb 12 19:36:01 EST 2007

Excellent points, all, Brendan!
Unfortunately, my RAID controller does not allow me to see any of the 
S.M.A.R.T. parameters, so I'm blind by that. However, my machine is 
not in 24/7 service. I've read in various places that power cycling 
of drives isn't a big deal and hope that is the case. My controller 
runs RAID 3 (an extremely poor choice for server applications), which 
will tolerate a single drive failure. Unfortunately (again) the 
company that makes the controller (NetCell) is defunct. I bought a 
spare EIDE and SATA controller, in case one of current controllers fails.
And aside: RAID 0 is, by the way, the worst choice of all: while the 
fastest RAID, with an N-disk array, you are you are N times as likely 
to suffer a catastrophic failure under RAID 0.
In addition, I keep more than my logs on my computer: all my 
financial info along with some work-related stuff is there, too. You 
can bet that it's backed up and that I don;t rely only on my RAID.
As for backup software: what you use depends on what you need. A 
simple copy is enough for data files and the registration key. Backup 
software often allows you to perform a complete backup and restore 
operation, so that you can completely restore your configuration to a 
new disk, along with all installed applications and registry keys. I 
use Retrospect by Dantz, but there are plenty of others.
Kim Elmore, N5OP