computer back-up. nklr

[billmonahan]

I got up to start my KLR today (in front of some guy riding the gaudiest Harley I've seen recently, but his started) and it seemed as if the battery died all of a sudden. The batt has 16000 miles and three years on it, so I think it is ready to give up the ghost. I just topped it up and serviced it about three weeks ago. After getting it jumped from a helpful old fellow, I rode it home about thirty miles. I noticed that at stoplights the neutral light was flickering in brightness, at turns the signals were operating at about twice their normal speed, and when I pulled up to my house it seemed as if the headlamp was decreasing some in brightness when revving the motor. This all seemed odd to me, to say the least. Anyone had this experience? I am going to pull out the batt and test it with a hydrometer, maybe tonight. I am hoping that is all that's wrong. Thanks in advance, Backroad Bill

[Jim Hyman]

Zach, It's great to get sound advice from a pro. I remember a saying years ago about racing that went "how fast are you willing to spend?". The same goes for computer backups, with protection & system stability replacing racing speed. It would be helpful if you came up with several "proposals" offering different levels of ease/protection/cost. For listers not familiar with multi-level backup strategies, Listers should also check out firewall home setups. I use ZONE-ALARM's free firewall software. ZDNET & CNET offer excellent (free) tutorials that deal with these topics. Perhaps you could contact Kurt Simpson (editor of Dual Sport News) & see if this topic would be of interest/benefit to subscribers. Thanks for your excellent post. Professor A9 Federal Way, Wa. [USA] http://www.zdnet.com http://www.cnet.com http://www.help.com http://www.zonelabs.com ps: I'm including your complete post, it wasn't on the list even though it was CC'd to the list. --------------------------------------- Zachariah Mully wrote:

> Sorry I couldn't help myself, but the whole backup discussion has bitten > me this will be long winded so pass if you have no interest in your > data. > > The optimal setup in my mind would be to have two large hard drives in a > RAID0 (zero) configuration... This means that the data is actively > mirrored across both drives, this has the benefit of preventing a failure > of one hard drive from taking down your system. If there is a failure, the > drives are automatically switched, and you can continue on your merry way. > The bad part about this is what you do to one drive you do to the other, > instaneously. So this won't prevent your computer from crashing when you > delete the system registry or open that message from "a friend". Also this > requires specialized hardware (a RAID card), but Promise makes an IDE RAID > card for about $60, so a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks is finally > becoming true as you don't need SCSI drives anymore. The good part is that > you insulate yourself from hardware failure and you speed up your hard > drive access (as you can read different information from both drives at > the same time). > Cost: > RAID Card ~$60 > Another IDE hard drive $100-300 > > In addition to setting up a RAID on my box, I would recommend picking up > either a Castlewood Orb drive (about $170 for the drive and ~$20 for a 2.2 > GB cartridge) or an Onstream tape drive (about $200 for the drive and > $30-50 for a 30GB cartridge) for doing your backups on. Then with some > backup software like Backup Exec (which I recommend for Wintel machines) > you can setup the following backup schedule. You'll need at least 4 tapes > (cartidges, whatever you're using). First do a complete backup every week > (level 1) on a certain day like Friday. Then until the next level 1 > backup, do incremental backups, level 2, (using the same tape) everyday, > either based on the previous days backups or the last good level 1 backup. > Every new level 1 backup you do with a new tape. At the end of the month > you can start to recycle the first tape .... And so on. If you really > wanted to get into it you could also schedule monthly and yearly backups. > The weekly backups should be kept for one month, the monthlies for one > year and the yearlies until you run out of storage space. > > Well, this is more of an enterprise level backup scheme but I think the > basis of it still applies to home backups... If any anyone needs any recs > or has questions I am more than happy to help... I deal with this everyday > and it would be a whole lot more rewarding to help someone who will > appreciate it rather than my ungrateful co-workers (whose collective > asses I have saved more times than they know). > > Good night... > Zack > 91 KLR