Invisible wrote:
> For the average home user, if your house burns down, you're not going to 
> give a **** about the holiday photos and the copy of Nero you just lost 
> - YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO LIVE!! 

Not true. Well, Nero, maybe, but holiday photos and pictures of people who 
are now dead and such are irreplacable. You can always get somewhere new to 
live, or fix the house.

> This is a very, very dumb way to do backup. A file-level copy will be 
> drastically faster. (It doesn't involve mirroring all the useless empty 
> sectors.) 

Depends how your RAID works. Windows doesn't mirror empty sectors because 
the RAID understands the file system. Linux and hardware mirrors empty 
sectors because you can put any file system on top of the RAID.

> Also, if you do a file-level copy, you have options such as compressing 
> the data and putting multiple backups on a single backup harddisk, doing 
> differential or otherwise partial backups, and so forth.

But it's no longer an identical copy. If you use a RAID backup, then if your 
primary fails, you can restore the backup in minutes.  Plus, there's 
(theoretically) no downtime during the backup process.

> In theory, until the disks are spinning at full speed, you don't get 
> that "cushion of air" for the heads to "fly" on, which should result in 
> wear. Of course, no doubt manufacturers know all about this and have 
> come up with ways to at least reduce the problem...

Yes, there's a finger that lifts the heads until the disk is up to speed.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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