RE: Re: Will I ever learn !!

["Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>]

> The problem with this, (and it is the solution I use now), is that it
> offers no protection against the system becoming corrupt - either due
to
> a virus/new proggie/new hardware crashing things, or turning off
without
> shutting down properly etc etc.

wrt, Virii, see my other post.

To protect against a software install causing problems with the system, be
careful what you install and if it is a problem for you, get hold of a
system recovery tool which offers a return to configuration prior to
installation of an application. It will slow down the install since it does
a system backup before every application install, but allows instant
recovery of the system without installing thiungs from scratch.

For new hardware, you could use the method you suggested for protection
against a new OS (break RAID, try, restore RAID) or look into hardware
profiles. Pretty much every Windows incarnation since Win95 has support for
hardware profiles. Usually it is an easy way to have multiple configs for
laptops, or desktops that mut exist with and without a network connection
or
transient hardware, but is also useful as backup. Windows NT (and I assume
it's children, Win2K and XP) employs hardware profiles as a backup system
for problematic hardware automatically but there is no reason you could not
configure your own set of profiles.

For installing a new OS, your RAID off, install, RAID on will work and
probably quite well. Personally, I would always format the drive and start
>from
applications necessary except as an emergency restore procedure since the
chances are the original install disks will be available and although it
might take some time, installing is a relatively simple process and allows
you to easily dump those applications you don't really want/use any more.

But in all these scenarios, the important thing that is the stuff likely to
be lost is the data and none of them are likely to affect the data.
Installing a dodgy sound card, whether or not it breaks your OS, will not
delete all your word documents, nor change the scripts and configuration of
homeseer. RAID will offer good fault protection against data loss, but
obviously data should have offline backups. RAID is also a good protection
against hard drive failure which is likely the most common form of data
loss
and seems to be the problem which started this conversation.

>
> So you can still completely bugger up your system.
>
> I have a hardware raid solution and when I downgraded from Win2k to
Win
> XP (why oh why?) I 'lost' my D: drive, which was a partition on the
> RAIDed drives.
> This is _with_ the correct drivers etc installed.  I did manage to get
> to the data & copy it all to the C: partition, so now I have 1/2
the
> space I did because I can't face wiping the machine and sticking Win2K
> back on. :-(

Partition Magic or similar should be able to help here. Or possibly
whatever
tools came with your hardware RAID system. You will be able to get the
space
back. I assume the problem has affected both drives, and since you have
RAID
you can play about with this and not have to worry too much about breaking
everything. Turn RAID off before you play, and you can then recover from
the
other drive if things go pear shaped, or if it works out, rebuild the
mirror
on the off drive once you have the partition back.

Incidentally, why are you using partitions anyway?

I am going to try and get all my machines using RAID here, but need to save
up a bit of cash first. What RAID system did you go for?

I am hoping that a top end RAID server at work that has been sitting
gathering dust for a while is about to be thrown out in which case it will
end up in the boot of my car :). Support for around 20 hot swap devices
IIRC. Then by making all data from all machines store on the RAID server, I
have only one location to back up and can use single cheaper smaller drives
in each local system. I could do something like this with a server PC, but
if this server from work is thrown out, it will prove a better system :)

> If only I had a tape streamer and backed up the machine before the
> upgrade :(
>
> Indeed, if I'd had my thinking head on that day, I could have broken
the
> mirror, upgraded one disk, and when that was pants, re-established the
> mirror and overwritten the kacky XP installation - DOH!

Definitely worth remembering for next time :)

Mark.