Jan Alter
(e-mail address removed)
or
(e-mail address removed)12.pa.us
You're pretty much on the money. However, even easier is an external drive
using either firewire or USB 2 for offsite backup.
--
Jan Alter
Legion:
If I understand you correctly, you're thinking of equipping your desktop
computer with removable hard drives (hopefully two hard drives) in mobile
racks. Let me say at the outset that if you go that route, you'll have but
one regret -- that your previous desktop computers weren't equipped in that
fashion. The flexibility, convenience, and peace of mind two removable
drives gives is enormous, and for most users the added cost of so equipping
one's desktop computer in this fashion pale into insignificance. You'll
never regret it.
There are a number of advantages using this hardware configuratation but the
most significant one is that it provides a near fail-safe backup system.
Using a disk imaging program such as the Ghost program you can clone the
contents of one hard drive to another easily, relatively quickly, and most
important of all -- effectively.
As you probably know, the hard drives are housed in so-called mobile racks
that fit in the 5 1/4" bays of a desktop's computer case . The racks
themselves
are two-piece affairs with the HD residing in a removable tray that slides
in and out of the rack. The beauty of this arrangement is that the drives
can easily be accessed from outside the computer case. Note that these
mobile racks are designed for desktop computers and not laptops/notebooks
because of the latter's size/weight considerations.
So by routinely cloning your day-to-day working hard drive to the second
drive you have a virtual bit-for-bit copy of that working drive. And through
the use of additional removable trays you're free to create additional
clones on hard drives that you can easily remove from the premises for
near-absolute security. Then again, you can use separate (limitless) hard
drives for whatever purposes you desire -- different operating systems,
graphics, one for the visiting grandchild, etc. And when the day comes that
one or another of your hard drives goes kaput, it's a simple matter to
replace that drive from the comfort of your computer chair without having to
get inside your computer case.
Assuming you have available two 5 1/4" bays in your computer case to house
the mobile racks, it will not increase the size of your case one whit. You
can, of course, consider configuring your system with a single removable HD
that would be coupled with an internal drive. But if you have the available
bays, I would urge you to consider having two removable drives. The enormous
flexibility this arrangement gives you is a decided advantage, and as I said
earlier, you will never regret it.
Art
