Sam said:
TO John and Art, thanks much for your replies. Art, what little I
understand about mobile HD racks, your suggestion and explanation sounds
like it would more than easily satisfy what I am looking for!! I am
definitely interested and would appreciate any details that you can
provide for reconfiguring my computer with two removable HDs.
My computer setup is two physical HDs on the primary IDE channel and a
DVD-ROM and Plextor 712A burner on the secondary IDE channel. If I
remember correctly, I used the last PCI slot when installing the Adaptec
Duo USB card. I believe but I need to check, I have only one vacant 51/4
bay left on the computer. Art, does my computer setup appear to be
something that might allow the use of the mobile racks??
Again, to all who replied to my emails, thanks very much. I always learn
so much from the information posted on these newsgroups. Have a good
weekend, Sam.
Sam:
First of all -- when you respond to a previous posting, please include that
post and all prior posts that bear on the issue at hand, or at least the
pertinent parts of the prior posts. This is for the benefit of all users who
have not followed the thread and are unacquainted with the issue. They too
may have a interest in this issue so it's desirable to include whatever
background info may help them to understand what's involved here.
I'm including in this post my previous comments on this issue, as follows...
May I suggest an alternate strategy for your objective? (SAM WAS CONSIDERING
A BACKUP SYSTEM WHICH INVOLVED THE SWAPPING OF INTERNAL HARD DRIVES).
Assuming your
desktop computer has two available 5 1/4" bays, i.e., vacant bays that you
can utilize, equip your computer with two removable hard drives in their
mobile racks. It's an ideal hardware configuration for what you want to
achieve. By equipping your computer in this fashion you will, for all
practical purposes, be able to easily maintain a near fail-safe backup
system and at the same time be able to experiment with different programs
and configurations with the full realization that should anything go awry
you will be able to return to your original system and configuration in an
instant. And accomplish all this from the comfort of your computer chair
with no need to get inside your computer case to make cable/power
disconnects and connects. It's close to an ideal system for many, if not
most, desktop computer users and I can virtually guarantee that once you
begin working with this arrangement you'll never want to return to the "old"
way. It's that good.
As I previously insinuated, the best arrangement (or so it seems to me) is
to install two removable hard drives. 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 using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or
Acronis True Image (I am not familiar with the V2i Protector Desktop Edition
program you mentioned in your original post), you can routinely clone your
day-to-day working hard drive to the second drive, thus having 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 kaputski, it's a simple matter to
replace that drive from the comfort of your computer chair without having to
get inside your computer case.
As I stated, in my opinion the best arrangement is to have two removable
hard drives installed. However, if you have only a single 5 1/4" bay
available to house one mobile rack, you can still profitably use a single
removable hard drive. In this instance you would have your day-to-day
working hard drive installed as an internal drive and the second drive would
be your removable drive. The internal drive (in effect, your C: drive) would
be configured as Secondary Master while the removable drive would be your
Primary Master. During normal operation the removable drive would be
electrically disconnected from the machine by a simple turn of the mobile
rack's keylock to the OFF position. (For additional safety, you could even
physically disconnect the removable drive from the computer by a simple pull
of the rack's handle. No more difficult then opening a desk drawer). So the
system would boot to your internal hard drive. When a time comes where you
want to boot from the removable drive you would simply connect it by turning
the keylock to the ON position. Since it's configured as Primary Master, the
computer will boot to that drive.
Do you see the enormous advantages to this hardware configuration? Now you
can safely play around with a wide variety of programs and configurations on
your day-to-day working hard drive, confident that if anything goes awry
(even to the extent that your drive becomes physically or electronically
defective), you have a perfectly good bootable clone that is virtually
instantly at hand. And you can easily clone back to your internal drive
(assuming it's not defective) the contents of the previously cloned
removable drive.
There's a wide variety of mobile racks available ranging in cost from about
$15 (all plastic) to $45 and up for the all-aluminum models. Interestingly
enough, in my experience the cheapos work just as well as the more expensive
models. Installing them is no more difficult then installing a CD-ROM or
other 5 1/4" device. You can do a Google search of "mobile racks" to peruse
the many different available models.
I can assure you that once you begin working with removable hard drives
(preferably two), you'll have one and only one regret -- that you didn't
have this hardware configuration on your previous desktop computers.
Art
