new computer - tanTALK

corvette · 04-03-2003, 06:10 AM

If you were buying a computer system for your salon would you have it configured with 2 hard drives to duplicate your system incase of failure or would you use an external tape drive for back-up .

Andy · 04-03-2003, 06:15 AM

neither ...

Mirrored drives is, in my opinion, overkill for the operation of a salon.

External Tape Drive are among the most frustrating of devices (economically prices ones that is), their failure rate is unacceptable. Now DAT tape drives that is another story, very reliable but you will pay more for the DAT drive than you do for the computer.

Writable (or Rewritable) CD drive or ZIP drive are in my opinion the best bet and economically prices alternative for backing up your Salon Data.

AND BE SURE TO DO IT EVERY DAY ... and never use the same media to back up your data that you used for the last backup ... if you do then while you are doing the backup you have no backup.

_________________

Andy Thompson
ACT Business Solutions
Toll-Free 877-777-6717
andy@atso.ca
ACT Help Center [ This Message was edited by: Andy @ ATSO.ca on 2003-04-03 06:21 ]

jcole · 04-03-2003, 08:57 AM

Drive mirroring or RAID 1 will only protect you against drive hardware failure. Many POS systems available for the tanning industry use Microsoft Access databases, which suffer corruption rates several times grater than MTBF (mean time between failure) for hard drives. Because of this, drive mirroring on these systems provides little additional security.

On POS systems that use MSDE, Sybase or Oracle, drive mirroring or fault protective arrays (RAID 5) are definitly worthwhile, since data corruption is much lower than the MTBF of your drives.

In either case, backups are still nessisary, as mirrored drives will not protect you from human actions (deleting a record by mistake will happen on both drives at the same time).

_________________
John Cole [ This Message was edited by: jcole on 2003-04-03 09:28 ]

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04-03-2003, 06:10 AM	#1 (permalink)
corvette Join Date: Feb 28 2001 Location: tennessee Age: 62 Posts: 205 Rep Power: 24	If you were buying a computer system for your salon would you have it configured with 2 hard drives to duplicate your system incase of failure or would you use an external tape drive for back-up .

04-03-2003, 06:15 AM	#2 (permalink)
Andy Join Date: Jan 25 2000 Location: CT Posts: 1,768 Rep Power: 25	neither ... Mirrored drives is, in my opinion, overkill for the operation of a salon. External Tape Drive are among the most frustrating of devices (economically prices ones that is), their failure rate is unacceptable. Now DAT tape drives that is another story, very reliable but you will pay more for the DAT drive than you do for the computer. Writable (or Rewritable) CD drive or ZIP drive are in my opinion the best bet and economically prices alternative for backing up your Salon Data. AND BE SURE TO DO IT EVERY DAY ... and never use the same media to back up your data that you used for the last backup ... if you do then while you are doing the backup you have no backup. _________________ Andy Thompson ACT Business Solutions Toll-Free 877-777-6717 andy@atso.ca ACT Help Center [ This Message was edited by: Andy @ ATSO.ca on 2003-04-03 06:21 ]

04-03-2003, 08:57 AM	#3 (permalink)
jcole Waiting Confirmation Join Date: Oct 17 2000 Posts: 252 Rep Power: 0	Drive mirroring or RAID 1 will only protect you against drive hardware failure. Many POS systems available for the tanning industry use Microsoft Access databases, which suffer corruption rates several times grater than MTBF (mean time between failure) for hard drives. Because of this, drive mirroring on these systems provides little additional security. On POS systems that use MSDE, Sybase or Oracle, drive mirroring or fault protective arrays (RAID 5) are definitly worthwhile, since data corruption is much lower than the MTBF of your drives. In either case, backups are still nessisary, as mirrored drives will not protect you from human actions (deleting a record by mistake will happen on both drives at the same time). _________________ John Cole [ This Message was edited by: jcole on 2003-04-03 09:28 ]

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