[Shotimes] Re: OT: file recovery utilities

[Ron Porter]

Overall, here's an insight from someone (me) with 33 years in the IT field,
and more Disaster Recovery experience than I wanted to have....plus numerous
dead HDs on my home PCs since '87.

Back about 10 years ago, we had a discussion about the (then brand-new)
solid-state memory devices like memory sticks. We determined that the life
of PC hard drives was limited, as solid-state is a LOT more reliable than a
spinning drive with mechanical heads.

HDs are still around, but the writing is on the wall. Before another 10
years goes by, I predict that PCs will no longer have traditional HDs
anymore.

Besides being safer (except for unavoidable problems like strong magnetic
fields close by, or physical destruction), getting your data into digital
form on a solid-state device (flash drive, CD, etc) will insure it's longer
life, as well as being able to be recovered down the road as technologies
change. They will all be based on digital formats....unless someone comes up
with a more efficient method than binary....unlikely, but not impossible.

Over our years in the business we have come across companies that bought
some type of proprietary backup system in the past that is not now
compatible with current technologies. In some cases, they are screwed!!

Many banks have saved their asses by having many records stored on
microfiche (which can be read with a flashlight and a magnifying glass!!)
and on backup tapes...which are no longer readable for many reasons, and the
prime one being new application software technology.

Since we started this discussion yesterday, t has motivated me to do another
backup of our home systems!!

Ron Porter

-----Original Message-----
From: shotimes-admin@autox.team.net [mailto:shotimes-admin@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of MonsieurBoo@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2005 3:09 PM
To: shotimes@autox.team.net
Subject: [Shotimes] Re: OT: file recovery utilities

Ian:  "It started off as a backup drive but  grew so much that I turned it 
into an archive drive. I was playing the odds; I  figure that I upgrade
every 
few years and hopefully the drive would still be  around for  me to transfer
the 
data off of it to a newer drive.  Unfortunately this one died prematurely.  
I'm thinking of getting an  external USB HD as well as a new internal IDE.
The 
USB would be a backup ..."  

Yep, "archiving in place" is the slick way to go.  For  the past 5-6 years 
I've just removed my old HD after copying everything I needed  off it to the
new 
one, put it in an anti-static bag, ziplocked it and stuck it  in the closet.

Now that's a REAL archive drive because it doesn't run  until you need it to

recover data, so it should last virtually forever.  
 
The cost is already amortized from using it as my online drive.   Compare 
that to the cost of CDs/DVDs and the mammoth time investment  required to
back up 
a big modern HD to those media, though with something 40Gb  or less, I 
suppose that's still a viable option.
 
But, with internal HDs you still have to worry about whether a PC ten years

from now would have a backwards-compatible internal HD interface and power  
connection where you could still remount and use today's  drives.  We'll
still 
have USB interfaces (or retro cards) ten  years off because they are 
multi-device standards, not just dedicated for  HDs.  And all it takes to
"archive" USB 
HDs is to just unplug 'em and set  'em on the shelf.
 
Besides, CompUSA sells enclosures that you can drop your old (or new)  
internal HD into  and turn it into a USB drive.  About $40 for the
enclosure and it 
currently pays for itself by virtue of the price difference  between a bare 
internal HD and the same sized USB version.  I just did that  with a new
"last 
year's model" 250Gb drive for total $120.  For  archiving multimedia files
so 
my main drive only has a handful onboard at any  given time, and it only
runs 
for as long as I need to transfer files to or  from.
 
PS - the file recovery utilities DO require a second HD to recover the
files 
to.  As long as the damaged drive still can physically  spin up, they do a 
doggone good job too.  
 
Cheers,
Mark LaBarre
94 atx 130k
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