My advice--go RAID. My main system's drive (C:) is used only for the O/S (WinXPPro) and software. Only about 15G of its 80G is occupied. All personal files are on two external USB2.0 RAID enclosures, each with a matched pair of 320G drives. One enclosure is drive D:, the other is E:. I use xcopy (yes, xcopy!) to back them up onto another pair of RAID enclosures, of the same make as those above, containing pairs of the same model drives as above. Re xcopy: I've tried several drive cloning packages (Powerquest's Partition Magic, and the like), but they either poop out on large drives or are stupefyingly slow. Xcopy is fast enough for my purposes, and it doesn't demand control of my system. Al
-----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Michael S. Hart Sent: Friday, February 04, 2011 10:27 AM To: The gutvol-d Mailing List Subject: [gutvol-d] !@!!@!!@! Major Crash
For those of you writing the movie of my life this is more "normal" than you might think, I should have known something was UP when the computer started at first try when I got back home two weeks ago.
Once again it has announced it has died the final death, and now it wouldn't go no matter all my shaking, tapping, pounding, etc.
Luckily, I had just made backups of all important files!!!
So, when I finally gave up all my usual cinematic efforts, I undid the hard drive and blew out all the connections, and tried again.
Lo and behold. . .VISTA!!!
This was one of the only machines around that ever did XP AND VISTA but the Vista part died long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away...
Until now. . .I'M BAAAACK!!!
Hee hee!
So, while not everyting seems to be working, it does appear I quite literally have once again escated the jaws of virtual death for the immediate future. . .as usual I am NOT rebooting until I have to so let's see how much work I can do meantime!!!
For those who were helping me pick out my next computer, keep at it even harder. . .I may spend real money on a USB 3.0 machine or will just get whatever is the best deal around. I usually get HP but...
More, I hope, later. . . .
Michael _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d