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Hi,
At 08:21 PM 5/2/2005, ip wrote:
Boot from a USB drive? Check the BIOS on the machine. Press Del or F2
during bootup and check out the boot sequence options. It either will
or won't list USB. Beware, make sure you exit without making/saving
changes if you don't understand the options. It's a good way render the
machine inoperable otherwise.
You'll need to check that on both laptop and desktop.
Will do. That may preclude doing what I want if it won't boot from USB
If you want the one USB drive to have the two systems on different
partitions, I think you'll need to set it up as dual boot. There are
traps there (problems with some printer drivers, occasional instability
in some cases), but it can work.
I was going to use Norton Commander to do that, although some people
suggest using Casper. Hadn't thought about the drivers issue. I assumed if
it was a clone I needn't worry.
Will a disk replication utility (Caspar) see the USB drive? Never used
either, but the drive SHOULD turn up in windows explorer the same as any
other, with a drive letter. Unless the utility is cobbled to only see
C: drive or something equally silly, it will be able to see the USB
drive.
Good.
Alternatives:
* Get a tape drive and one of those backup programs that does a bitwise
copy of the disk, with network agent for laptop. Could be about $3KUS
at a guess for that 100GB capacity. Could be less when you factor in
compression. Works for laptop and desktop, requires a network, requires
tape interchange, backup procedure etc.. Restore to a fresh drive when
old one dies.
Been there, done that. Too expensive and a hassle for me. I've been doing
hot-swapping for years and love it.
* Use a RAID mirror on the desktop. This would not address the laptop
backups. 2 drives. One is dynamically updated as a bitwise copy of the
other near instantaneously. One drive dies, the other kicks in
transparently, but you should be notified to replace the dead disk.
Check on that notification feature, as I've seen RAID without it - kind
of pointless, unless you go checking it weekly. Cost: a second HDD, a
SATA RAID controller, not sure of $. Check if your motherboard does
RAID, if so, probably no need for RAID controller, unless motherboard
RAID controller has useless/absent utilities. Pretty much a
set-and-forget once its up. You would ideally still have backups for
longer term disaster recovery/outright destruction of the PC.
Only problem is if the thing that caused the C: to fail caused the mirror
to fail I'm SOL. That's why I like storing a drawered drive in my safe.
Pull it out, stick it in, and I'm back in business.
* Compress images to DVD (not sure if your disk will compress to < 4.7
GB, but you should be able to split the image to multiple disks if
necessary). When disk dies, buy new one (or keep one in stock),
install, restore image, GO (could take a few hours to restore). Would
work for either laptop or desktop, if each has DVD burner or you can
network one to the other in the case where only 1 has a DVD burner, but
you'd need a network boot disk of Ghost or equivalent to do the restore
to the one with no DVD drive. Lots of hands on work here, managing
disks etc. 30GB DVDs are said to be coming out at the end of the year.
Ditto re some of my above comments. Someone else referred me to a site that
has drawers for SATA drives. I may look into that.
Thanx for all the suggestions, folks! I'll let you know what I end up doing.
Michael
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