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Re: HDD blues

 wrote:

> it boots no more. *sigh*

I feel your pain. I have been through more HDDs than I 
would like to admit to. A few months ago I was scheduled 
to go to a TV station to show off my wearable, and the 
HDD drive died at 2am the prior night. I also had a HDD
die while in Japan, and on another occasion I was in a 
hurry and hooked up the battery the wrong way, toasted 
my HDD and DC/DC converter. On each of these occassions 
I felt exactly like you do now. Never again!

Your HDD will die on your wearable. But you don't have to
lose all of the time you invested. This is why I created 
a system for protecting my data and configuration. I can 
recreate my entire system including all configuration 
details within a couple of hours. This is what I do:

  - I have the linux distribution loaded onto a web 
    server, allowing me to do a network install from 
    anywhere in the world. All I need is a floppy 
    drive and a LAN on the net.

  - I have all of the install files for stuff that 
    was not in the standard distribution sitting in 
    a tar file (viavoice, mcam, etc). One ftp and I 
    have everything back.

  - I have saved all of the linux config files that 
    have been customized, there aren't many. They 
    are in another tar file. Besides, they are all 
    now in the wear-hard list archives :)

  - I make sure that my data files are separate from
    the linux OS, by putting all stuff that needs to
    be saved somewhere in /home. An extra bit of 
    protection is to put the /home dir in a separate       
    partition, if the kernel is trashed the data 
    isn't.

  - I take a few seconds and tar up the contents of
    my home directory once a week or more often if 
    I am doing lots of programming. I have been 
    burned too many times to start over.

  - I have an extra HDD pre-configured for my system
    at all times. If my drive dies I will be up and 
    running in 30 seconds. Worst case scenario is 
    that I may lose a week's worth of data. 

> How do people protect there HDD's???

We don't. We protect our information instead.

> No titaniam covering, no gyroscopic stablisers.. 

They will still fail eventually ... 

  -- Doug

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