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New technology
by Cathy Grammer-Margolin, inventor00@pobox.com - September 07, 2001 at 17:50:49:
New Technology SIG By Cathy Grammer-Margolin, NOCCCGene Barlow, of User Group Relations, gave us an excellent presentation about "How to Organize and Protect Your Hard Drive". He talked about his suggested 7 steps: 1. Install 2 Drives 2. Convert FAT to FAT32 3. Keep FAT32 Partitions 4. Setup Multiple Partitions 5. Operating System Partition 6. Create Application Partition 7. Create Data Partition
Hard drives are very cheap these days (under $100 for a slower speed 40 gig drive), so adding a second hard drive and mirroring your first drive onto your second drive is the most convenient and efficient way to back up. Also recommended was Upgrading your first hard drive, if it is under 8 gig or over 80% full. To get the best and worst Hard Drives of the moment, see: http://www.driveservice.com/bestwrst.htm (see below) 1. IBM (Excellent engineering!) Notebook and desktop drives. There have been some issues with the 6.8gb and the 4.8gb notebook drives. 2. Fujitsu (Desktop drives only) Notebook drives fail regularly. 3. Seagate (models since 1998 only) New high speed drives have been failing lately as well as rubber encased models. Cheaply made. 4. Maxtor (We are seeing more and more of these as failed) see below. You get what you pay for. Do not use these in server applications! 5. Toshiba (notebook drives only) 6. Quantum. Has had a bad batch of drives with a defective chip incl. the CX,LC,LA,LB and KX series fireballs. 7. Western Digital (They still haven't learned, their drives are still failing left and right). Cheaply made. 8. Samsung (Inexpensive, you get what you pay for!) Cheaply made, consumer use only but do a religious backup!" from www.driveservice.com
Converting to Fat 32 allows partitions greater than 2 gig with less cluster size loss. Gene recommends keeping each partition under 8 gig or else the cluster size gets too large and you waste more space.
Gene went over Primary drives (up to 4) , then extended drives which then are divided into logical partitions.
He recommended keeping a separate logical drive for data and another one for applications (i.e. I use C drive for software and D drive for Data).
When you have two hard disks, you then need to develop a backup strategy and Gene went over this. Make certain you back up your DATA very frequently (including your e-mails), and backup your applications as needed. As Gene said, Hard drives do fail. Backup and Backup!!
In September, John Johnson will tell us all about the Computers used in the Long Beach (and elsewhere) police cars. He will tell us what they can access!
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