RE: A cautionary tale

[Paul Gale <groups2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I feel for you - a very unlikely scenario and the odds of that
happening must be pretty high - if only they were your lottery numbers!!!

A tape or physically separate backup is still a good idea I guess.

-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim
Sent: 09 May 2010 10:11
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] A cautionary tale

Hi,
I came downstairs yesterday to the smell of cooking - not bacon, but the
PSU in my main office PC.  Antec silent PSU had gone to a better place. 
After much swearing etc. I pulled it out and swapped the PSU for a spare -
still no joy, so I resigned myself to a new Mobo CPU and RAM (well every
cloud ...) and said outloud "Well the sodding computer is only a life
support system for the hard drives anyway".  All I really need is my
PST file from outlook and I can exist in limbo until the new bits arrive. 
Imagine my surprise when I put the HDD in a caddy and it was dead - Closer
inspection showed a burn in the motor controller chip - good job its backed
up on the other drive - ah, but the other drive showed the same signs of
having met an untimely demise. This puts me in quite a situation - All the
important stuff is backed up on WHS, but there was rather a lot of stuff
that whilst not being critical, was nice to have - it was reciprocally
backed up onto 2 separate drives, but a
s both of those drives were in the same box and are now dead it means I
have probably lost the lot (I have ordered 2 identical drives and will try
replacing the controller boards to see if I can get them to play ball once
more - the longest of long shots I know....).

BUT WHAT IF IT HAD BEEN MY WHS MACHINE? I have been putting rather a lot of
eggs in the "folder duplication" basket thinking it was insuring
me from drive failure, but if 2 drives can be smoked by a PSU failure I'm
not sitting quite as prettily as I first thought.  Is there anything I can
put between the drive and the PSU to isolate them.  Short of having 2 WHS
boxes, what do people think the solution might be?

Bugger,
Bugger,
Bugger.

Tim.





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