PC/Data Backup (off topic)....

[DKWRACER]

Hi friends!!!! Ever suffer a total PC meltdown? Having a little bit of an IT background, I know what a frustrating experience this can be!
Back in the day, pc's could be backed up via 1/4 tape drives, Iomega cassettes, floppies and migrating up to RW cd-roms, these would mostly encompass backup of selective data, some better than others.
My most recent experience came as a result of having to upgrade from Win 95 to Win 98SE due to better support for USB devices, esp. a digital camera. I have not upgraded to XP for simple reasons, but this does not mean it's an inferior OS.
In the innards of your pc are possibly two ribbon cables that connect from the motherboard to peripherals ie: IDE h-drive and c/d rom...Most modern pc's have two IDE ports built into the motherboard, each can have a master and a slave, and ea. is configured via small jumpers near their respective power connectors, you should also see some nomenclature on the decals of h-drive and cd for configuring which is the master and which is the slave. A h-drive and cd can be on the same cable (pay attn. to pinouts)....With this in mind, I put my cd rom as the master/single on one cable and two h-drives on the other cable, one is master, the other slave. I put the master at the end of the cable for identity reasons (and labeled)....Once you are happy with what is on your master (bootable) drive you can create a Ghosted drive with Ghost s/ware from Symantec. What happens is that you boot from floppy or Ghost c/d, perform the Ghost function which copies the entire master to the slave. In event of a castastrophie, you have a mirror of your Master!!!Just change the slave to become the master and try to decipher what happened to your original master (mech. failure)?
I ghost my master once a week to ensure data/OS backup, you can also employ critical data backup by copying to cd rom.
Some of todays modern s/ware has the ability to "snap-shot" before making changes, but will not cover hardware failure.....I have found some pretty cheap IDE drives on Ebay  in 10 gb capacity or under $30, and keep a small supply "ghosted" and ready in-case of emergency.
Adios, Tom Brosius....

[firstturn]

Tom,
  I just plugged in a multi port station into my  USBport and have all my plugins attached in addition to two jump drives that can handle my backup for my computer and my Quickbooks for business use.  I thought this was the easiest way without to much thought energy going into the whole process[)].

Ron Carbaugh

[DKWRACER]

Ron...I concur all the way, "backup" Thanks for "sharing"......
A concept, not "un-familier" to this site!


Tom Brosius

[firstturn]

Tom,
  You are the best at attacking a problem and solving it[^].  I just thought I would tell you how us old system analysist take short cuts[] and make life so much easier[:0].  I always like it when people tell me they know everything about the history of computer systems and how we got where we are today............I ask them to set down and do a little programing in RPG, the response is HUH?  There I go telling my age again, but in the old days we had to build the programs because IBM (aka Big Blue) had everything tied up with patents...oh well it is nice now to be able to buy short cuts.  Tom keep up the great off the subject posts.  BTW the rain suit(Dry Rider) you suggested is great at a savings  of over $80.00.  Thanks.  For those of you that didn't see the post way back this company sell rain gear cheap and Tom found it and shared it with all of us.

http://stores.ebay.com/Neese-Industries

Ron Carbaugh

[OUCWBOY]

I've done my share of programing in Rocky Mountain Basic. Navy used this for  many years before going to Unix.
Oh the memories ....... NOT!!!

Donny Smith