real life application Re: [G4] EIDE and Ultra ATA RAID

[Philip J Robar]

On Apr 25, 2005, at 1:47 PM, Ralph Garrett wrote:

> On Apr 25, 2005, at 3:34 PM, Steve Goldstein wrote:
>
>> And the messages confirmed in my mind that I did the right thing  
>> in recommending Raid 1 to him--there will always be a hot backup,  
>> even if the controller card goes south.  In addition, I will  
>> outfit one of the 5.25" face plates on the Dell box with a  
>> removable HD rack, and we will get at least two 160 GB HDs  
>> (Samsungs are only about $80 each at newegg.com) with cassette  
>> carriers to fit it (about $35 plus $15 per carrier), so that he  
>> can do rotational/generational backups every night.
>
> For that application, that is a very good configuration. Speed is  
> not an issue, redundancy of data is.

I agree with Ralph, but be aware that with this setup you can't go  
more than two days into the past to recover data. Is that sufficient  
for your friends needs? Does it meet all the professional and or  
legal data retention obligations that he has? If someone's business  
(or in this case several businesses) depends on a computer then they  
should have a back system designed by someone who knows what they are  
doing. At the very least I'd think that your friend should also be  
doing incremental backups to DVD or tape.


Phil