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What do you think? Good idea or waste of money?
I already have two fairly large drives and I do keep duplicates on both drivers of files that are very important to me. However I'm thinking the data still isn't 100% secure this way because both drives are constantly powered on and available to the OS. I don't run any scheduled backups or anything, I just manually copy over stuff that I want duplicates of. Also there isn't enough space on the second drive for a complete image of my C: drive (system, apps and games).
Today my entire C: partition got corrupted for some reason. When I tried to log in again after having left the computer for a few hours, I just got an "Unknown hard error" and then a black screen with just the mouse cursor. Upon hitting reset, I just got a disk error and it wouldn't even load Windows. Running chkdsk from the Windows DVD got back some of the data but not nearly all of it.
I have changed the RAM voltages recently which might explain it allthough I'm not certain - since so much of the drive got corrupted, even data I haven't touched in weeks, I'm thinking it might be some background program or defrag pass that did it (I recently switched from 32-bit to x64, maybe some tool I was using wasn't compatible..I dunno) or maybe even a virus. Still investigating. Anway, while I didn't loose anything important, the result was a lengthy re-installation. Also it might just have been pure luck that my D drive didn't get corrupted as well.
So I was thinking, with a 500GB external drive (that I only connect when making backups) combined with something like Acronis True Image, I could schedule a complete imaging of my C drive every week or so. My C drive is 640GB, but it's rarely 100% full and most imaging programs use compression anyway. In the event of another disaster like that, it would cut my downtime to an hour instead of a full day. What do you think? Would that work and be a good idea or just a waste of time and money?
I'm looking at getting the Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500GB since it's in stock at my local computer store. The other option is a "Freecom 500GB".. never heard of that brand before..? Or if neither is a good choice, I can of course order online. The 750GB and 1TB drivers are beyond my budget atm and a bit overkill.
I already have two fairly large drives and I do keep duplicates on both drivers of files that are very important to me. However I'm thinking the data still isn't 100% secure this way because both drives are constantly powered on and available to the OS. I don't run any scheduled backups or anything, I just manually copy over stuff that I want duplicates of. Also there isn't enough space on the second drive for a complete image of my C: drive (system, apps and games).
Today my entire C: partition got corrupted for some reason. When I tried to log in again after having left the computer for a few hours, I just got an "Unknown hard error" and then a black screen with just the mouse cursor. Upon hitting reset, I just got a disk error and it wouldn't even load Windows. Running chkdsk from the Windows DVD got back some of the data but not nearly all of it.
I have changed the RAM voltages recently which might explain it allthough I'm not certain - since so much of the drive got corrupted, even data I haven't touched in weeks, I'm thinking it might be some background program or defrag pass that did it (I recently switched from 32-bit to x64, maybe some tool I was using wasn't compatible..I dunno) or maybe even a virus. Still investigating. Anway, while I didn't loose anything important, the result was a lengthy re-installation. Also it might just have been pure luck that my D drive didn't get corrupted as well.
So I was thinking, with a 500GB external drive (that I only connect when making backups) combined with something like Acronis True Image, I could schedule a complete imaging of my C drive every week or so. My C drive is 640GB, but it's rarely 100% full and most imaging programs use compression anyway. In the event of another disaster like that, it would cut my downtime to an hour instead of a full day. What do you think? Would that work and be a good idea or just a waste of time and money?
I'm looking at getting the Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 500GB since it's in stock at my local computer store. The other option is a "Freecom 500GB".. never heard of that brand before..? Or if neither is a good choice, I can of course order online. The 750GB and 1TB drivers are beyond my budget atm and a bit overkill.