>> 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.

I don't know about you, but if my house burnt down, this would be a 
catastrophy. I would be homeless, and financially destitute. The bank 
isn't going to let you stop paying the morgage just because your house 
burned to the ground. And with no house to sell, it is impossible to buy 
a replacement. I'd basically be homeless for the rest of my life. I 
wouldn't be able to *afford* a computer! Why would I care about some 
holiday photos when I'm going to be spending the rest of my life on the 
streets?

(And then there's the "minor detail" that your backup copies will be in 
your house, and thus destroyed in the process...)

>> 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.

Well, as I say, it depends on what you're trying to do.

If you're trying to avoid downtime due to hardware faults, RAID is the 
right tool. If you just want to avoid losing a few specific precious 
files, a file-level copy seems more appropriate.

Post a reply to this message