Everything was going just great this week until I started hearing some weird noises coming from my hard drive. I had started to notice some strange beeping over the last couple weeks, but I didn't worry too much as I thought it was just getting a little louder in it’s old age. Well, things starting getting worse. I got some corrupt files and a couple times it would freeze up and I would have to turn off my laptop completely to get going again.
I instantly realized I hadn’t backed up in a couple weeks, and was reminded that I still didn't have a great backup solution in place. The first thing I did was go pickup a 120G external hdd to immediately back everything up (since my server is full). This works out anyway because I have been looking to get one anyone to run virtual machines on.
Right before backing everything up the hdd suddenly started making this horrible grinding noise, my heart sank. I thought for sure I was screwed. Thankfully it stopped and then worked for long enough to copy everything off to the external drive.
I knew I didn't have time to send it into Toshiba for a new hdd so I went ahead and ordered a new laptop drive (I wanted to upgrade to 7200 RPM anyway) and ordered it fedex overnight. Well, fedex apparently has a different view of overnight and when the hard drive didn't show up I had to dig up an old spare one to use for one day so I wouldn't miss a day at the client. I had the fun experience of installing XP and my dev tools to use for just one day.
The drive finally showed up yesterday and I started installing last night and I am still working on it today. Even though its a pain I do love starting fresh.
So, my immediate crisis was over… but I still needed a better long-term backup solution. I also need alot more server space since I keep buying more CDs and taking more photos. (I also scan documents instead of filing them). So I went and picked up two 250GB IDE drives from Best Buy that were only $99 after rebate. My plan was to throw them in an old computer I have and then use them as my storage system. The first problem was that my old computer didn’t like the new drives very much, and the old system wasn't really designed to have two drives so they were kind of rigged up inside. The second problem was that the rebates on the drives are limited to one per person (which it never said in the store). So, I returned those two drives yesterday. It also seemed like kind of a hack of a solution, if I spent a little more money I could do something that would work better and last for a longer time.
After talking it over with Jayme (my future brother in law) I decided to buy a new Dell server, its a little Celeron with 2 80GB SATA drives for just over $500. I then ordered two more 250GB SATA drives from pricewatch for a little over $100 a piece. The plan is to use the server as a file share as well as run Virtual Server or something like that on it for development. It would also be perfect for running source vault. The 2 80GB drives will be mirrored and be used for the OS and applications. The 2 250GB drives will be mirrored as well (probably not RAID mirror, but backed up). I have about 80GB of music and photos now, this gives me about 150GB more of space… should last me for a couple of years.
I also plan on using the space to run backups from my laptop, my desktop, and my wife’s laptop. Now I just need to find the right software, I have heard good things about Vice-Versa.
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