The only system failure that would trash both hard disc simultaneously would be a serious power supply failure which personally I have never experienced.

Viruses are also a possible problem but there havent been any "I'm going to overwrite all your hard disc" viruses for a while. Also due to the structure of modern - i.e. big - discs, it taks a lot of **** over the structures on the disc to take to you a situation where data is totally lost.

If possible format your discs using different systems - e.g. one disc FAT32, another NTFS. Destructive viruses tend to work on one system and not another.


Also such viruses attack one disc at once. If you machine locks up unexpectantly with the discs hard on, and you suspect a virus, hit the red button!

Clearly CD'Rs in the cupboard are pretty safe. However, I've known these discs to fail. I agree that CD R/W are less reliable. I have no experience with DVD+-R[/W].

Generally I consider some of the comments about possible failure scenarios here to be near paranoia. Nevertheless I must admit that a dose of paranoia over data integrity might have saved me serious pain in the past!

How about using an external HD via USB or firewire and only having it connected for backup?

I'm in industrial IT-business and have seen major system crashes, fires, lightning-strikes, corrupted data because of hardware faillures... etc.

[This message has been edited by Roel (edited 01-29-2004).]

I agree that CD daily backup or whatever interval one chooses is the best way to do backups because it removes the possibility of virus getting access to them. If one experienced an attack then the worst is just losing one day worth of files. Roel, thanks for that advice- I will start doing it immediately.

Can the virus penetrate a compressed file/zip files ?

I do my backups on the 2nd HD for at least 2-3 days backtrack (maybe should be a week but some files are very large like my pst file for outlook). And they are in zip files.

It should not be a problem if you run Windows XP Scott. The only problem you may face is: "should I get the 120 Gigabyte 5,200 RPM one or the 200 Gigabyte 7,200 RPM one?".


Best regards,
Mike