Question about discs and system design

[AL D]

I run my one-man business from a PC. Until now I have been using a Win
98 system with about 40gb of drive space in total. This has been just
sufficient - but only just.

Now I am building a new PC with Win XP. I'm not anticipating using
many new programs. However I'm aware that subsequesnt versions of
existing programs are often bigger. I'm also aware that Win XP
probably takes up more disc space than Win 98. And I am accumulating
data files, inluding graphics files.

Can anyone give me a clue as to how much disc space I should go for?

I currently have three discs available top use: 120gb, 80gb, and a
slower 40gb (which can be used if really necessary)

I'm thinking of using the 120gb as my primary C: drive, holding the
OS, and my programs and my data. Then using the 80g drive to back all
that up onto, so that if the C: drive fails, I can simply make the
80gb drive my C: drive. The backup drive will be housed in a portable
enclosure, so that it can be stored in a different location if I go on
vacation (as a safeguard against fire or theft).

When the contents of my 120gb drive no longer fits on the 80gb drive,
I will know it's time to get bigger drives. (Thanks, J.W. for that
tip.)

Does the above design make sense? If so, what size partitions should I
have on the main 120gb drive and the 80gb backup drive? Is there any
point in partitioning them at all?

Thank you,

Al D

 

[dawg]

Get the largest drive you can.If you need the space it's there,if you don't
need it the drive will run faster.
Shoot,I've been getting away with using a 20GB Maxtor for years. I play a
lot of games and I use Win98SE and Windows2K,so I have to do a lot of
shuffling and defrags.My next drive will be at least a 120.

 

[Mxsmanic]

I run my one-man business from a PC.

Rule 1 of using a PC for business: Take regular backups. Most small
businesses that lose their computer capacity and have no backups fold
within six months or so. Nothing is more important than backups.

Once you have regular backups, you're covered.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I run my one-man business from a PC. Until now I have been using a Win
98 system with about 40gb of drive space in total. This has been just
sufficient - but only just.

Now I am building a new PC with Win XP. I'm not anticipating using
many new programs. However I'm aware that subsequesnt versions of
existing programs are often bigger. I'm also aware that Win XP
probably takes up more disc space than Win 98. And I am accumulating
data files, inluding graphics files.

Can anyone give me a clue as to how much disc space I should go for?

Don't you mean "disk" space? 'cause "disc" means Seagate. Then
there are the extra-classy and even outright snooty "disques".

I would never run afewer than three computers for business -- a main
machine and two backups, and I would backup at least daily. I'd also
backup to a pair of external hard drives and keep those drives in a
separate location. Backups are cheap -- a 120GB HD can usually be
bought for $50, after rebate (see www.salescircular.com for local deals
and http://newspaperads.mercurynews.com for Fry's deals), which is at
least 5-10 times cheaper than the cheapest data recovery service. I
used to have just one backup computer, but then one day both of my
computers failed, so I put together a cheapo.

PCI IDE controller cards that support RAID HD mirroring are cheap.

If you buy a monster 200GB - 400GB HD for your new computer, you may
want to limit it to just 137GB so that your older computer can read it
in case your new machine ever fails. Also even though Windows XP's
NTFS is better than FAT32, you may want to format it for FAT32 so that
Windows 98 can read it.

Keep your HDs cool by either mounting them vertically (may require some
drilling of the computer case) or by having fans blow over their
electronics. Don't mount a pair of HDs right next to one another with
less than 1/2" of air space between them.

 

[David Maynard]

I run my one-man business from a PC. Until now I have been using a Win
98 system with about 40gb of drive space in total. This has been just
sufficient - but only just.

Now I am building a new PC with Win XP. I'm not anticipating using
many new programs. However I'm aware that subsequesnt versions of
existing programs are often bigger. I'm also aware that Win XP
probably takes up more disc space than Win 98. And I am accumulating
data files, inluding graphics files.

Can anyone give me a clue as to how much disc space I should go for?

I currently have three discs available top use: 120gb, 80gb, and a
slower 40gb (which can be used if really necessary)

I'm thinking of using the 120gb as my primary C: drive, holding the
OS, and my programs and my data. Then using the 80g drive to back all
that up onto, so that if the C: drive fails, I can simply make the
80gb drive my C: drive. The backup drive will be housed in a portable
enclosure, so that it can be stored in a different location if I go on
vacation (as a safeguard against fire or theft).

When the contents of my 120gb drive no longer fits on the 80gb drive,
I will know it's time to get bigger drives. (Thanks, J.W. for that
tip.)

Does the above design make sense? If so, what size partitions should I
have on the main 120gb drive and the 80gb backup drive? Is there any
point in partitioning them at all?

Thank you,

Al D

You need a more robust backup mechanism than a hard drive copy and 'a'
backup is not a backup because if your primary fails you're left with just
1 thing and an 'oops' at that point of panic can wipe it out.

For a business you should consider the hard drive copy a convenience copy,
not a backup.

You should have a regular backup schedule to some permanent medium.
Companies typically do that daily and have a weeks worth. Then a weekly or
monthly archive (could be the old dailies) that is kept off site so if, for
example, Mr. Firebug down the street decides to get his jollies at your
place the separate archive still exists. Same thing with business programs
(and O.S.) copies.

And keep the restore programs in a known place, not 'on the machine'.
Funniest thing I ever saw was the look on someone's face who went to get
their backups only to discover they hadn't kept a stand alone copy of the
stupid restore program so the whole mess was useless. Or would have been if
I hadn't had it.

Which gets to the point of testing the backup and restore process. Nothing
worse than pulling out the backups only to discover they're all crap
because something wasn't done right, every day for the whole last 2 years.

Your scheduling needs may be different but you need to evaluate the cost of
lost data, how it could be recovered, and how long you want to risk it
in-between saves.

 

[AL D]

Thanks for the sensible tip. That's exactly what I have been doing on
my old syetem. I had a backup of all my data on a second hard drive
but I also backed all my essential business files onto CD regularly
(but not as regularly as I probably should have). Also, it would
probably have made sense to keep those CDs in a different location -
in case the house got burned down.

On the new system, I'm wondering if there's much point in housing the
second hard drive in a stand-alone enclosure. I wonder if the
advantages outweigh the disadvantages (advantage: convenient if my PC
gets stolen/burned; Inconvenient; slower access speeds, more wires
cluttering up the office).

Al D

 

[AL D]

The above suggestions are valuable - thanks. Is the old fat32 system
mush slower than the newer NTFS? Are there any potential pitfalls in
formatting my discs as FAT32 rather than NTFS? Is FAT32 slower? Is
there a chance that in the near future, new versions of popular
software will no longer work on FAT32 systems?

That's another valuable tip - thank you! I've just ordered a h/d
cooling fan, as it happens.

Al D

 

[AL D]

Can anyone help with the last question above? Is there any point in
having more than one partition on my main dirve (say, one for the OS,
one for programs and one for data)?

Or is that just going to make it more dificult to keep a backup of
that drive on another drive?

I'm guessing that since I want (in case the main hard drive fails) to
replace my main drive with my backup drive and be able to boot from it
and run my programs as before, then I should have the same number of
partitions on both drives, yes? How many partitions should that be?

Thanks again,

Al D

 

[Mxsmanic]

Is the old fat32 system
mush slower than the newer NTFS? Are there any potential pitfalls in
formatting my discs as FAT32 rather than NTFS? Is FAT32 slower?

On heavily-loaded systems and systems with a great deal of mass
storage, NTFS is faster and more efficient. On small, lightly-loaded
systems, FAT32 is faster. For certain applications, FAT can be
faster; at one time, Microsoft recommended FAT partitions for things
like sequential log files, in order to improve performance.

NTFS is extremely resistant to file-system corruption in the event of
a power cut. If you turn off a FAT system abruptly, you may lose data
and file-system structure, sometimes irretrievably. If you do the
same with NTFS, the file structure will remain intact, although
application data may be lost (NTFS protects its own structure, but
application data is still the responsibility of the application).

Is there a chance that in the near future, new versions of popular
software will no longer work on FAT32 systems?

Very unlikely. Even the operating system isn't currently using all
the features of NTFS.

That's another valuable tip - thank you! I've just ordered a h/d
cooling fan, as it happens.

Some fans at the front of the case blowing past the disks work pretty
well, too.

 

[AL D]

Is there any reason why I shouldn't have my main 120gb drive formatted
as NTSA, and my 80gb backup hard drive as FAT32 (so that my old Win98
PC can read from the backup disc in an emergency)?

Thanks,

AL D

 

[David Maynard]

Thanks for the sensible tip. That's exactly what I have been doing on
my old syetem. I had a backup of all my data on a second hard drive
but I also backed all my essential business files onto CD regularly
(but not as regularly as I probably should have). Also, it would
probably have made sense to keep those CDs in a different location -
in case the house got burned down.

I suspected you already did but I thought it was worth mentioning 'just in
case'.

On the new system, I'm wondering if there's much point in housing the
second hard drive in a stand-alone enclosure. I wonder if the
advantages outweigh the disadvantages (advantage: convenient if my PC
gets stolen/burned; Inconvenient; slower access speeds, more wires
cluttering up the office).

Also to not have it spinning all the time. Would be a bummer to discover it
started to die just about the same time your primary did, or it got taken
out with the same lightning strike, or that the machine went loco
scrambling all the hard drives, or whatever. (Ironically, I just lost an
online convenience backup when, for an as of yet undetermined reason, the
partition on that drive became scrambled. Partition Magic knows it's FAT32
but XP thinks it's raw, unknown, and unformatted. A teensy bit unuseful
I was just about ready to recycle that drive anyway, and almost did just
before it went brain dead, but now I'm faced with first finding out what
went wrong.)

The down side to a removable is that disks are moderately sensitive devices
(depends a lot on the head park mechanism) and a drop to the floor runs the
risk of partially or wholly destroying the contents. And with only 1 drive
as the backup you're in the 'only 1 left' dilemma if the primary fails
(perhaps hoping it wasn't the machine itself that scrambled the original)
and don't underestimate the tension. I've seen people become so flustered
that they copied partitions in the wrong direction resulting in a perfect
'backup' of the garbage (another reason to have practiced the process
beforehand). That's why, in this kind of situation, I like to have
something permanent as the real backup.

(A larger company might use multiple drives and/or RAID arrays that change
the complexion of the problem but you're not looking at that scenario.)

 

[David Maynard]

The above suggestions are valuable - thanks. Is the old fat32 system
mush slower than the newer NTFS? Are there any potential pitfalls in
formatting my discs as FAT32 rather than NTFS? Is FAT32 slower? Is
there a chance that in the near future, new versions of popular
software will no longer work on FAT32 systems?

Win9x compatibility is why the drive I lost was FAT32, btw, but it was only
storing data. You lose all the security descriptors with FAT32, though, so
it's not an exact copy of an NTFS partition and FAT32 is not as robust a
file system as NTFS.

 

[David Maynard]

Can anyone help with the last question above? Is there any point in
having more than one partition on my main dirve (say, one for the OS,
one for programs and one for data)?

Or is that just going to make it more dificult to keep a backup of
that drive on another drive?

I'm guessing that since I want (in case the main hard drive fails) to
replace my main drive with my backup drive and be able to boot from it
and run my programs as before, then I should have the same number of
partitions on both drives, yes? How many partitions should that be?

Thanks again,

Al D

I'd match the partitions on the large drive to the backup drives so they
always fit without having to get fancy dancy about it.

 

[AL D]

Thanks for the help. Do you not advocate RAID for the one-man
businesses and home users? RAID cards are getting extremely cheap
nowadays, I see. Is it more bother than it's worth or something? Less
reliable than backup software, perhaps? I guess the ideal thing would
be to use both, yes? RAID to guard against hard disk failure and an
additional separate drive image to guard against data corruption, yes?

Al D

 

[David Maynard]

Thanks for the help. Do you not advocate RAID for the one-man
businesses and home users? RAID cards are getting extremely cheap
nowadays, I see. Is it more bother than it's worth or something? Less
reliable than backup software, perhaps? I guess the ideal thing would
be to use both, yes? RAID to guard against hard disk failure and an
additional separate drive image to guard against data corruption, yes?

Al D

RAID isn't a substitute for backups, it's an up time solution and, in that
sense, if you want to afford it then, yes, it would be nice. Depends on how
valuable the time to do restores is. Imagine an ISP, for example. Customers
wouldn't be too happy about waiting an hour or two for the system to come
back up but it might not be all that catastrophic for you (I don't know).
But a single system RAID array isn't going to save you from fire, flood,
lightning, Mother Nature in general, Murphy's Law, the big bad internet,
the power company, or your own fingers (no, not that fi... never mind).

What I had in mind when I made the larger company comment was one with
networked, multiple site, multiple RAID configurations where distributed
multiple copy repetitive storage (not a trivial thing to manage) reduces
the chance of every one of them going out at the same time but, even then,
there's no substitute for a permanent copy.

 

[AL D]

I see your point. The actual cost of a RAID card for me is about $20
plus the cost of an extra hard drive. It might just be worth having
because of the eventuality that I am working away for about one hour
without backing anything up (due to negligence) when a hard drive
dies. Admittedly a hard drive dying is a rare event though. So,
perhaps it's not worth it. Like you say, everything can be restored
from the backup files - at least up to the last time one backed up.

I am currently in the process of using Acronis Trueimage for the first
time. The interface and wizard makes it very straightforward to use,
and it is working perfectly with my 80gb drive, which is now housed in
a remote Firewire box. I'm amazed that the disc access seems no slower
now than it was when it was running from the IDE cable inside the PC.
The fan-cooled box is very quiet too, so I am very happy with the
setup so far.

Thanks again,

Al D

 

[Conor]

I see your point. The actual cost of a RAID card for me is about $20
plus the cost of an extra hard drive. It might just be worth having
because of the eventuality that I am working away for about one hour
without backing anything up (due to negligence) when a hard drive
dies.

Hey mate, you wearing your tin foil hat? Man, talk about paranoia.

--
Conor

I'm so grateful to the USA for their contribution to the war on terror.
After all, if they hadn't funded the IRA for 30 years, we wouldn't know
what terror was.

 

[David Maynard]

I see your point. The actual cost of a RAID card for me is about $20
plus the cost of an extra hard drive. It might just be worth having
because of the eventuality that I am working away for about one hour
without backing anything up (due to negligence) when a hard drive
dies. Admittedly a hard drive dying is a rare event though. So,
perhaps it's not worth it. Like you say, everything can be restored
from the backup files - at least up to the last time one backed up.

Yeah. It's not as simple a decision as it would at first seem. It's nice to
have the system continue to operate should a 'typical' failure occur but
the potential downside is lapsing into a false sense of security. I don't
know what your relationship with Murphy is but he and I have a love/hate
one. He loves to present me with some of the most bizarre scenarios and I
hate it Like the time he gave me an intermittent wall outlet that worked
perfectly fine, especially when being monitored, except for completely
trashing whatever hard drives were in the system about once or twice a day,
usually just after having finished a complete restore, but it only took a
month or so for my hair to grow back.

So, once you realize pretty much the same independent backup schedule is
needed, with or without a mirrored drive, a significant portion of what
seemed to make it initially attractive evaporates.

On the other hand, after having taken appropriately prudent measures Murphy
will ensure nothing untoward happens just so you'll feel like a Dufuss for
going to all the effort But beware. He's just lying in wait for you to
think so.

Kidding aside, I'd do the mirror for the up time and the expectation that,
in 'typical' cases, it would simplify the recovery process (knock on wood)
but not with an expectation of it being a backup. Consider the pair a,
hopefully, more reliable 'single' drive.

I am currently in the process of using Acronis Trueimage for the first
time. The interface and wizard makes it very straightforward to use,
and it is working perfectly with my 80gb drive, which is now housed in
a remote Firewire box. I'm amazed that the disc access seems no slower
now than it was when it was running from the IDE cable inside the PC.
The fan-cooled box is very quiet too, so I am very happy with the
setup so far.

Super. Sounds like you have a good solution for that aspect of it.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Is there any reason why I shouldn't have my main 120gb drive formatted
as NTSA, and my 80gb backup hard drive as FAT32 (so that my old Win98
PC can read from the backup disc in an emergency)?

I assume you mean NTFS.

Nothing prevents you from formatting one disk as NTFS and the other as
FAT32. The advantages and disadvantages are as previously described.
I prefer NTFS for everything, but that's personal preference.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Thanks for the help. Do you not advocate RAID for the one-man
businesses and home users?

I don't recommend RAID for SOHO and home users. It's a lot of trouble
for very little gain.

RAID cards are getting extremely cheap nowadays, I see.

They are also generally a nightmare to configure. Recent MBs often
have on-board RAID support, but I take care never to use it.

Is it more bother than it's worth or something?
Yes.

Less reliable than backup software, perhaps?
Yes.

I guess the ideal thing would be to use both, yes? RAID to guard
against hard disk failure and an additional separate drive image
to guard against data corruption, yes?

Backups serve both purposes.

RAID is for systems that require the best possible disk performance
under heavy load and/or maximum uptime even in the event of disk
failure (depending on the RAID type chosen).