On Thu, 24 Sep 2015 18:12:26 -0700, Don Y
wrote:



How large are your mirrors?

I have a 1TB mirrored set that is a little less than half full
I didn't think there was a terabyte of music out there ;-)
I have over 6000 songs and it is a lot smaller than a TB.
Movies are the ones that gobble up bytes.

Rebuilding a complete mirror of any one drive takes a *long* time.

It happens in the background so I don't care.

My USB approach is actually much worse (in terms of potential
rebuild time) because it is USB-based. But, putting drives *in*
a machine leaves me trapped with that particular type of
machine. E.g., I have SATA, SAS, SCA, SCSI-W and PATA drives...
which should I "standardize" on?


These days SATA seems to be the way everyone is going.
I have a few SCSI drives but they are tiny compared to newer drives
and I don't use them.
The last couple machines I bought don't even have PATA ports. I still
have a stack of drives tho

I also keep an image of my C: from a fresh load and periodically after
that.
It is the ultimate "System Restore" that gets around hardware failures
and the worst viruses.
The "data" drives are backed up many times, including drives in a
cabinet

I image each system as I build it. E.g., after installing the OS.
After installing drivers. After installing updates. After installing
"core utilities" (like archivers, compressors, etc.). After installing
the applications. Then, finally, after configuring the applications.

So, I can roll back to an arbitrary point in the build process and
"start over" from that point. (I keep a typewritten log of the
build steps *in* the image so I can see what I did to get to a
particular point; includes any license activations, etc. so I
don't have to revisit the original media unnecessarily -- ISO's
kept in that 2T archive)

This is particularly useful with Windows machines. But, also
handy with the other boxen that I use -- too hard to keep track
of all the little details required for each system, otherwise!

I have two laptops that are configured to automatically restore
themselves from a custom image that I hide on a hidden "partition".
These are handy for on-line work: any infestation goes away as
soon as I reboot.