...is not pleasant.
Fortunately it was a spare external drive that wasn't in active use. (I think. But I can't check what was on it any more, can I?) But I'm getting really tired of disk failures now. Off-site on-line back-up is not a luxury, folks. Do it now. There are plenty of options. Mozy is pretty good, simple to use, and not expensive.
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You remind me that I ought to be rsync-ing my laptop to a safe place on a regular basis. Abi pointed me at Moxy a while back, but sadly there is no option for Linux. :(
How about Panther's Time Machine? That is the funkiest backup solution I have ever seen - ever! It does the impossible and makes the otherwise tedious and time consuming process of backup and restore FUN! Watch as Microsoft copies the idea and it appears in Vista SP2 in a couple of years or so. It sure won't be in SP1 as the developers already have their hands full trying to fix their broken OS. :)
I've only seem the demos of Time Machine--I probably won't be getting my copy of Leopard till next week or so. It looks extraordinarily cool, but it's still an on-site backup solution. I'm moving more towards the idea of having a bootable hot backup on standby (using Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper to clone the HD), and an up-to-date off-site copy, for when the house burns down.
It's not paranoia, it's risk management. :-)
Legends of the Sun Pig is Martin Sutherland's little corner of the web. Scotsman in the Netherlands. Parent, husband, infovore, gamer, geek. I also make great stew.
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Frank
Strange... I _know_ that harddrive failure is not a question of "if" but "when". Still, I have been around computers since, oh... 1983 I think, my first MSX home computer with cassette tape storage, and I have never ever had a harddrive die on me yet. Guess I should knock on wood now.
I've had floppy's go bad, cassette tapes die, CDs and DVDs I burned myself become unreadable, even some of the CDs and DVDs I bought in the store and paid extra for the content on it became unusable. I had a motherboard blow its cheap Chines caps... but no harddrive.