Hi there!

I've become a lurker in these forums lately, I know. Too much personal 
stuff going on thats keeping me from being creative or from getting the 
time to create the images, much less show them off (can't scream 
everything private into the public, can I?).

Anyways, I'm currently pondering two rather technical issues concerning 
data storage.

1. I'm suspecting my HD in my PC to fry soon. It's making weird noises, 
needs time spinning up and is getting way too loud for its own good. 
It's SATA and the connection-slot looks shot, the connections on the HD 
lay bare when removing the cable, so I'm not even sure if the data gets 
sent there properly.
Now, before you scream: "Do your backup!" - it's sitting in a Raid 1 
configuration, so if that specific HD dies, I'll still have one with the 
data.
However, I'm thinking of switching the expected faulty one with a 
different one, which would be bigger in storage capacity. I know that 
I'd lose the extra storage when I just mirror the smaller HD onto the 
bigger one, but I'm thinking about just buying two bigger ones, first 
mirror the smaller onto the bigger, then put the second big one into the 
raid and mirror them yet again, THEN arrange new partitions on the now 
unused bigger space. Anybody have a clue if that's going to work? I'd 
rather not reinstall my entire PC.

2. My dad's PC (or better, its motherboard) fried itself recently and 
since then he's got troubles keeping track of all his data. He's got a 
PC at his office, one at home, and two laptops he's working with. You 
might think no one should need that many computers, and I agree, but 
that's how things turned out for him at work and due to software 
licensing issues.
Anyways, he's starting to lose track of all the backups and versions of 
work he's doing on various PCs and I was wondering if anyone knows of a 
good, reliable software, which might just require an external HD to keep 
a specific folder (or various thereof) synchronized across multiple 
computers? My ideal would be something he'd install on any computer he'd 
need, and then just plug the external HD in, it'll synchronise the 
computer with the HD, and when he leaves the PC, he'll just synchronise 
again and take the HD along. All he'd need to do every now and then is 
backup the external HD and he'd have a lot less trouble keeping his 
stuff uptodate and backed up.
Any ideas or suggestions?

Regards,
Tim

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