Backing up your computer

It has come to a time where most people have at least 100 gig of data, and need to backup. What is the cheapest method that people use to backup their data? I find DVDs insufficient and RAIDs too expensive. I dont want to come to a day where either of my hard drives fails on me. Does anybody know of any good solutions?

I honestly think that RAID is fairly cheap compared to other solutions - especially in the long run as you don't physically need to continue to back up to new disks each time - or overwrite old ones. That said, I would still back up valuable data on a RAID array.



The problem with RAID is that it is not the easy to migrate from your current solution - and even harder to go back.



I would suggest buying another disk of the same capacity - preferrably from the same manufacturer. If you have a newer chipset - like the Intel set with Southbridge ICH6R (most 915/925 boards), you can create a RAID array with Intel Matrix from two disks. You can create a RAID 0 partition for the operating system and apps which will give you a little speed boost and a RAID 1 partition for valuable data back-up. If one drive fails, you lose the RAID o partition, but you can reconstruct - or get back the other one. AMD board also support similar arrangements.



If you have 2 80GB drives, you can have 100GB RAID0 and 30GB RAID1 (as this partition is duplicated across the disks) = 160GB. Or you can configure it how you want remembering to halve the storage of the RAID 1 partition.

But you've already got the controller. You're gonna have to buy another HDD to to the backup to anyways....

If you have the room in your case, get a larger hard drive, set it as an extra storage drive if you do not want to do a raid. Hard drives are so cheap anymore; you can get a 120GB seagate for about $100.00



I suggest you check into these, push-button backup external drives:



http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...9084&CatId=531



Seagate makes those all the way into the 400 Gb storage segment.



Tiger direct will ship to the UK as well, I am pretty sure.

i already have the controller?



so i just get another hd and it should support it?

If the motherboard you have in your sig is right, yes.