[RTTY] computer/soundcard recommendations

[Bill Turner]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

At 02:20 PM 5/24/2006, Richard W. Solomon wrote:

>Looking forward to seeing those 40 GB DVD's hit the market !!
>In my case I use the System Restore function in XP.
>
>73, Dick, W1KSZ

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

If you're backing up 40 Gb from your C drive, you need to do some 
pruning. With that amount of data, I'd recommend two drives, a 
relatively small C drive and a relatively large D drive. Have all 
your programs and application data on the C drive and your documents, 
images and whatever else on the D drive. That way, you can image only 
the C drive, which is by far the most critical since it contains the 
operating system and app data files, and do simple backups on the D 
drive which is much less critical, since it contains files which are 
not dependent on each other such as the registry, etc.

I actually go one step further. In my computer I have a 40 GB C 
drive, with only 3.5 GB actually used, a 250 GB D drive which is 
about half full and an external USB 250 GB drive which is identical 
to my D drive. I save my images of the C drive to the D drive and 
once a week or so, copy the entire D drive to the external USB drive. 
Every now and then I go through and delete some old images when I'm 
SURE I will never need them again.

Since I am certifiably paranoid, I even have a second, but smaller, 
external USB drive that I use to do selective backups from the D 
drive; stuff I *really* can't afford to lose. That drive I store away 
from the computer in a safe place.

Personally, I don't trust CDs or DVDs that much. I have seen them 
develop errors after burning. In my experience, hard drives, 
especially ones that are not used much and are babied, are much more 
reliable. YMMV on this one.

So far, so good.

Bill, W6WRT