Dying computer

[excaliber]

My old Win2K machine is in its deaththroes.

A downloaded Win2K hotfix corrupted the Registry on shutdown. It BSOD's on every boot, and safemode only works occasionally. The few times I got in, I uninstalled a few hotfixes, which undoubtedly made it worse by breaking the rest of the installed hotfixes.

A Win2K boot cd could not find the installtion to repair or install over (keeping settings). I was forced to clean install Win2K.

Im now in the process of reinstalling, resetting and generaly fixing windows. The modem is not recognized (always a problem on our computer).

Moral of the story. Im still crunching with my fast computer, but it uses the old comp as a proxy to the net. I'll be away till we can fix the comp.

Third time this has happened within the last 2 months. A clean format would do it wonders...Its getting old.

[IronBits]

:( Hang in there! :cheers:

[Moogie]

Ugh...that bites! :(

Hang in there. Hope you can get it running ok soon.
:trash:

[excaliber]

Good news. Im now online at home, on the computer. Im checking the network status, seems ok. Should be able to dump soon

A fresh install really bites. All Services have been wiped, and lots of programs dont work (like Norton).

Oh well!

/me looks into a tape drive

[IronBits]

Raid mirror will be cheaper and faster

Take a gander at this!
http://www.arcoide.com/why_duplidisk_is_the_best_raid_solution.html

DupliDisk works on virtually all operating systems and processor architectures.
There is never a need to upgrade to a newer RAID 1 model when a newer operating system comes out. DupliDisk is compatible with any operating system: Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, XP, 2000, Novel, RedHat Linux, TurboLinux, SuSE Linux, OpenLinux, Unix, BSD, Citrix, DOS, FreeBSD, Mac OS9,10, Multi DOS, Open BSD, OS/2, QNX, Solaris, THEOS, and so many more. You can even use different operating systems on different partitions on the

[excaliber]

But heres my question.

If I understand RAID correctly, it takes two drives and treats them as one, mirroring the data (or striping for speed, but i dont care about that).

So if a critical and fatal change is made to say, the registry, its made on both. I still have a dead system either way.

I could though use the extra drive as a backup drive. I've considered doing that with my home network. Set up a network drive that acts as a backup for my comps.

Thanks.

:trash:

[Paratima]

Originally posted by excaliber
So if a critical and fatal change is made to say, the registry, its made on both. I still have a dead system either way. You are correct. In the case of a fault, hardware OR software, that does a legitimate write of junk data, you are still hose-ed.

RAID-1 protects against your HDD (or its built-in controller card) failing. Period.

This is why I prefer to keep the second drive NOT in a RAID configuration, but simply as a second drive. With my crunching systems running on RAMdisk, the HDD powers down & snoozes. :sleepy: I only wake up that second drive to do my backups. Of course, you can still write stoopid stuff while doing your backup, but the likelihood is way down there. RAID-1 is for people who can't remember or don't have time for the following...

NOT MATTER HOW GOOD YOUR SYSTEM, YOU MUST MAKE REGULAR BACKUPS!!!

Ignore this at your peril. :smoking: