Backup strategy

I just downloaded that Dropbox utility. Very nice! It allows you to make a folder on your pc. You then just drag the files you want to backup in there and they automatically hget backed up onto the Dropbox server. They are then accessible anywhere provided you have access to log on (you create an account). FWIW, the Dropbox server uses the Amazon S3 servers. It also allows you to share a file to the net very easily. This would make it much easier to share files without the need for a hosting account. Storage space of 2GB is free. If one needs more space, one can get 50GB for $9.99 per month or $99 per annum. Maximum file size permitted is 350MB.
Nice!

Michael.

michaeloconnell wrote:

Al,

As an amazon account holder, I found it very easy to sign up for the Anazon Simple Storage S3.
However, for the life of me, I can not figure out how to use it.
To a not-so-techie person like me, they certainly do not make it easy to understand.

I have seen stories that google may offer an online backup system. Have you heard anything about that?

Michael.

Amazon s3 is aimed at web 2.0 developers not folks at home. They don't do a good job of telling you that. So if you are shutterbug or some video/picture online gallery site then you can write the code to use it. If you are just a home user you need to get some software from somewhere to do it for you. The software available is improving but its not really ready yet for everyone to use I dont think.

I've heard several rumours of several companies possibly offering online storage facilities

Its a real pity that you cant mirror drives in windows XP, that would be a real nice and simple way of have reasonable redundancy in the system.
Well it turns out the feature is in there, but just turned off!. You can do a small bit of hacking to get it working
Follow the instructions in the link, its quite simple but you must be extremely careful that you edit the dll and exe files exactly as they describe. The link talks about Raid5, but I'll stick to raid1, simple mirroring. This work around seems to enable w2k server mirror functionality.
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-m...-5-happen,925-2.html

It worked for me with 2 40gig drives, so I'm off now to get 2 terrabyte+ drives, so unless the machine gets hit by lightening, then it'll do fine.
I haven't seen a performance hit on the machine doing this, then again I dont do anything more taxing then photoshop on it. .

For those who might be in the know, mirroring is when you have 2 hard drives, where one is always an exact clone of the other, windows maintains the link, so one drive can go bang leaving you to fall back on the other, the odds of loosing the 2 simultaneously from a hardware fault are fairly low.

Turns out the solution above is only stable for XP with SP2,
for SP3 use the following.
www.optimiz3.com/low-cost-and-reliable-n...-jbod-raid-0-1-or-5/
I'm currently mirroring 2 1.5TB drives at the moment, I reckon its gonna take nearly 2 days to run :ohmy:

Once its done though Dave, its done... A bit like formatting a brand new hard drive...

yea, and I dont see much of a performance differance now that its up and running, no cpu cost..
It was finished when I got home today, its a little more piece of mind knowing that my mp3/pics/whatever are a little bit more secure now.