[Jim]

anyone got a SSD (solid state drive) yet?
looking to getting a 5-10 gig SATA one to run my operating system from.

Also anyone have any idea when the next intel cpu price drop is coming. I need to get an E8400 but they are still around £140

[Jim]

it seems that most SSD's are around 30gig and are starting from around £70. Is it worth buying yet or worth waiting another couple of months?
I'll be getting another samsung 1TB F1 tomorrow to back my other drive up with which are around £75 so if I get a SSD as well it'll be over £200 just on hard drives!!!!
It will be awesome tho.

Anyone got any knowledge on the best way to run 2 hard drives side by side (ie one as a back up?)

[GCW]

The E8500 and E8600 are already around, so if things go the usual way the E8400 should get cheaper fairly soon.  And once the i7 gets more popular prices should drop more.
Just depends if you can hold on for a while.  Are you upgrading or doing a fresh build?

Not gone solid state yet, can't help there.

What do you mean with the hard drives?  RAID?

[Jim]

the e8500 and the e8600 are well overpriced for the extra you get from the e8400 so I'm going with the e8400.
Was hoping the i7 launch would of brought the price of core2duo's down but it's not really affected it yet.

I'll have 2 1TB hard drives and I want to use 1 of them to back up my stuff, I'm after how to do this in the best way.
I beleive that raid isn't that good, is there a program to automatically back stuff up or is it best to do it manually, is it best to have the back up drive on a switch so you can switch it on and off as and when its needed etc.....

[GCW]

I got my Q6600 2 years ago (I think), for 140 quid.  I'm not convinced the E8400 qould be any better for the stuff I do.  Just an aside, ignore my ramblings.

I played with RAID.  I initially went for a RAID 1 setup, but I was tempted to try a RAID 5 setup.  I couldn't get the RAID 1 to work very well with the controller I got, so I sacked it.
I run 3x 750GB drives anyway, so anything important I back up to one of the other drives (well, both at present 'cos I have the space).  Every now and then I copy all my HD vids across.

I have to mention that the PC I am talking about is used only for video and music editing.  It doesn't go online, doesn't get used for office work, so there's only one or two folders I need to back up.  You could do the same with a main use PC too.
To be honest, the fact that RAID 1 effectively halves your memory put me off.  I don't need to back up everything, and the way I do things at present is no more hassle than the fecking RAID pissing about was.

[slackline]

RAID is a good way of mirroring disks, but there are lots of different types of RAID, some software, some hardware and it can be fiddly.

I use an excellent program called rsync to mirror my backups, you basically say "I want to mirror this directory structure from location A to location B", A and B can be different drives, or even different computers over the internet.  It then uses checksums (file sizes) and last modified times to copy the changes in A to B.  This is a particularly efficient way of doing it as say you edit a picture and remove a smudge from one area and then save it on your local HD (location A).  Not all of that file will actually have been modified, just the little bit that relates to the area of the image that has been modified.  You then want to update the mirror of location A to location B, well rsync will notice that the version at A is newer than that at B and will copy it over, but heres the clever part, instead of copying over all of the file it only copies over the bits that have changed, making it a lot quicker (obviously the first time you do this it will take some time).  The really neat thing is that I can set up a CRON job to automate these synchronisations in the background.

Now, how to do this under M$-windows?  A quick google suggests there are rsync versions that have been compiled for windows (see here), but as to which are the most usable I can't really comment.  The other solution (which I use at my current work where I'm obliged to use M$) is to install UNIX-like shell called Cygwin and include rsync as one of the packages that you install.  (Personally I'd go for the later, but thats 'cause I'm familiar with bash-shell CLI).

I've been considering an SSD for a new server I'm planning, mainly 'cause they'll be quiet as a dead mouse.  As to prices (for these and processors)...




As GCW says more uptake on the recently released i7 and prices will drop.  As to the SSD I'd imagine as they become more popular prices too will drop, when they start sticking them in portable devices, then the per-unit price will drop dramatically for bulk purchasers and in turn this should knock on to consumers.

[Johnny Brown]

Anyone got any knowledge on the best way to run 2 hard drives side by side (ie one as a back up?)

As Obi pointed out in another thread, using RAID 0 to constantly mirror drives may be a bad idea as any mistakes, viruses etc are instantly copied.

I use a free sync program like slack-line, and run it weekly or after major changes. The one I use is syncback, I don't know if its anything special but works fine.

Planning a rebuild fairly soon so any price beans you spill will be useful. Basically my back-up drive is full but is IDE; if I replace it I'd rather get a SATA drive, which will need a new motherboard as existing one only has one SATA port; makesd sense to upgrade processor as well... like the sound of a SSD for C drive.

[cofe]

Planning a rebuild fairly soon so any price beans you spill will be useful. Basically my back-up drive is full but is IDE; if I replace it I'd rather get a SATA drive, which will need a new motherboard as existing one only has one SATA port; makesd sense to upgrade processor as well... like the sound of a SSD for C drive.

will be interested in some knowledge too. still haven't sorted mine out.

[Bubba]

Iis there a huge performance advantage to running the OS from an SSD?

[slackline]

Iis there a huge performance advantage to running the OS from an SSD?

Pro's and Con's.

Big advantage (to my mind) would be that theres no spin-up lag, and the lower power-consumption.

[Jim]

Planning a rebuild fairly soon so any price beans you spill will be useful. Basically my back-up drive is full but is IDE; if I replace it I'd rather get a SATA drive, which will need a new motherboard as existing one only has one SATA port; makesd sense to upgrade processor as well... like the sound of a SSD for C drive.

will be interested in some knowledge too. still haven't sorted mine out.

As soon as the E8400 cpu price drops to around £100 is the time to strike, I'll keep you updated

[Jim]

just seen this about the new amd chips
http://www.itproportal.com/articles/2009/02/09/amd-releases-five-ddr3-capable-phenom-ii-processors/
probably old news but I don't keep abrest of amd news. Should help to get the intel rices down tho

[GCW]

As Obi pointed out in another thread, using RAID 0 to constantly mirror drives may be a bad idea as any mistakes, viruses etc are instantly copied.

Sorry to be pedantic, but RAID 0 is striping.   Mirroring is RAID 1 and its variations.

I can't quite see how  using a sync program will eliminate the copying of viral files compared to RAID 1?  A RAID array running purely mirrored is effectively running as a single drive, so you're not really copying the virus.  Plus you'd be keeping up to date with antispy/viral software anyway.

[slackline]

I can't quite see how  using a sync program will eliminate the copying of viral files compared to RAID 1?  A RAID array running purely mirrored is effectively running as a single drive, so you're not really copying the virus.  Plus you'd be keeping up to date with antispy/viral software anyway.

If you're syncing your whole OS then presumably you would be mirroring your updated antispy/viral software at the same time?

That said I would hazard a guess that its mirroring/backing up of media (mp3/images/movies) as opposed to system files that is of interest here, and these can of course contain hidden malicious software that would be copied/mirrored (and would exist on both drives in a RAID 1 setup too, should one of the drives fail).

RAIDs useful, but I mirror to an external HD, 'cause if theres a power surge that makes it past the power-surge protector I use it has the potential to fry both drives in a RAID setup.

Online options are probably worth considering too (although will of course chew-up bandwidth like Violet Beauregarde).

[GCW]

My point was that if you synced data, you'd still copy malicious files to the second drive like with a Mirrored array.  I was questioning JB's point that RAID was worse than sync in this respect.

Conversely, RAID 1 will give you a fully functional drive if the first dies.  Then you bung in a replacement drive and away you go, all the OS etc is still OK.  This won't happen with sync if you only copy files.

Horses.  Courses.

[GCW]

Oh, and if you've mirrored your drives, got surge protection and virus software is up to date and then both drives get fried, you're one unlucky fucker and I bet you external backup HDD would get sat on and broken by fat Aunt Betty anyway.  There's only so many precautions you can take.

[nik at work]

Aunt Betty isn't fat, just big boned.

[slackline]

Oh, and if you've mirrored your drives, got surge protection and virus software is up to date and then both drives get fried, you're one unlucky fucker and I bet you external backup HDD would get sat on and broken by fat Aunt Betty anyway.  There's only so many precautions you can take.

Shit I've never run AV/spyware software, thats me screwed! 

Off-site back-up is the final step really, 'cause if your house burns down it doens't matter whether the drives are in your server or external.

Apologies for the misunderstanding Re  sync v's RAID

[Bubba]

Online options are probably worth considering too (although will of course chew-up bandwidth like Violet Beauregarde).

I don't they're viable as a backup solution. Those that claim to offer unlimited storage don't really, because you can't archive anything to them. As soon as you delete a file from your PC it's removed from the backup too. They are good at backing up a snapshot of your current system, but not much use for storing loads of music, etc on.

[Jim]

Most of the music and video's are replacable anyway. For me its only the photo's that really matter.
I back those up to DVD every so often as well.

My plan is to have a SSD OS drive then 2x 1TB drives, one with a switch on the powerlead so I can turn it on/off when I need to back up so its not constantly powered on and then run a backup program every other week or whenever required. Does this sound like a good idea? obviously the drives are sata2 and the motherboard will support hotswapping so can switch the drive on/off if the computer is on or not

Adam, if you wanted to buy the bigger hard drives for your new computer now (I recomend these ones) you can always get one of these assuming you have a spare PCI port. This way you already have got bits of your new computer so helps spread the cost as well

[Johnny Brown]

Cheers Jim, that's a great idea, didn't know such things existed.

Apologies for my RAID 0/1 confusion, I was just repeating what I'd been told. Having been stung for 500quid when my last drive failed I'm wary of having the back-up drive working as hard as the main one. My system runs on a third drive, not such an issue if that dies.

[tomtom]

I suspect I'm wide of the matk here, but before it was pinched my Dell mini9 had a SSD - it was great. THe machine was completely quiet - really weird! But it was slow, reading on boards there were read/write speed issues, and upgrading to a better/different SSD made quite a difference apparently.
I suspect the beasts you're talking about Jim are larger/more sophisticated than the budget job in the Dell, but might be worth looking into the read/write speeds?
T