Data Paranoia/ was mysterious hard drive problem SOLVED

[Donald McCaig]

Dear Gurus,
	I am a freelance writer. Sometimes it takes me six years to finish
a book and were I to lose my data, I would lose my house. I am a data
paranoid. I back up my 2400  twice daily onto a 280 - when you're used to
traveling with a laptop and one goes down, its better to be backed up on
another laptop and 280s are cheap and 500 MB will hold three or four books,
quicken files - all the vital stuff.
	Everyday I back up onto Backjack (Backjack.com) which gives me 40
MB of off- premises storage for about $24 a year. Lovely simple software
(better than retrospect) and easy recovery should all your in house
computer systems get hit by lightening (possible here in the mountains).
	I've lost hard drives, had to reinitialize hopelessly corrupted
ones and have never lost crucial data. What I have lost is apps and tweaks
and reinstalling and tweaking a complex system is one very long day's work.
	Also - I've started transferring all my CD's to MP3 for road music
and intend to start transferring all my vinyls. While these aren't as vital
as my work data, I wouldn't want to lose them. I think I'm going to get one
of those 160GB firewire LaCie's.
						Donald McCaig




Yucatec Farm
Williamsville, Virginia 24487
USA