OK, I'll stop advocating for multi-use computers as only David and I are on that wavelength.
I have to say, though, that you gentlemen seem to experience a truly extraordinary number of hardware failures. If I had even one-tenth as many "when things blow up" experiences as some of you describe, I think I'd either buy better quality components or call an exorcist or both. Don't dismiss me as naive. My first computer was an Altair 8800 that I assembled from a kit. My next was a DEC PDP8 that I bought as surplus from the Air Force and rebuilt the (paper) tape drives. I've also owned, along the way, a Commodore 64, a TI 99/4, an Apple II, an Apple II+, and a slew of PCs. I've set up and operated RAID 0, 1, and 5 arrays, and a variety of both wired and wireless networks. I don't recite all that to establish my expertise because I have never considered myself an expert, only a power user. Here's why I cited all that stuff. In a small computer career stretching back into the middle 60s, I have NEVER had a hard drive failure and NEVER lost one bit of stored data. I've never had a CPU failure, a GPU failure, a motherboard failure, or a sound card failure. I can recall one power supply that got flakey, one 5 1/4 floppy drive that died, and a couple of early CD writers that bit the dust. Have I been lucky? I suppose so and yet I think experiences like mine are more the rule than the exception. Does this make me complacent? It does not. I run two hot-swappable drives in a RAID 1 configuration, I do a daily backup to another drive in a separate location with a separate power supply on a separate circuit. Everything is on auto-shutdown UPS systems. And I use real-time Carbonite backup. I don't buy cheap components. I use top quality boards and cards and enterprise-class drives. I use premium power supplies that are oversized. I have more heat exchangers and cooling fans than Carter has liver pills. Now how much more belt-and-suspenders can I get? And tell me again about how my data would be more secure if split between two machines. Bill (Who is not argumentative but is perplexed) On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Ralph W5JGV <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think "what we have here, is a failure to communicate". Some are > > merely attempting to make the point that it is OK to use their Flex > > computer for other things such as web browsing, Email, and an occasional > > document and such. It is not always necessary to lock it up for no other > > use. > > > Re multiple computers - I have had my fill of trying to do too many things > on one computer. I vividly remember my days as a Sysop, when I ran a > 4-line > dial-in BBS with various internal and external modems on a single 386 > computer, with DOS, DesqView, and a whole 4 MB of RAM. And a 40 MB hard > drive. After I added a network to the system using a program called Little > Big Lan, things got, err... "interesting." > > My philosophy now is pretty much, "One task, one machine." That being said, > it actually comes down to running related stuff on each machine, limiting > the amount of panic that ensues when one of the boxes blows up. So I like > to have boxes for Ham Radio, web server, weather, grabbers, business, etc. > > And yes, everything is backed up several times. (I learned THAT lesson > early > on!) I have about 9 TB of external storage drives that are split across > three different machines in two separate buildings which are far enough > apart that they should not both burn down at the same time. Backups and > auto-mirroring run automatically on all the critical machines and files > several times per day. > > So far, so good. (Except for one time, and we won't talk about that!!) > > 73, > > Ralph W5JGV - WD2XSH/7 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Flexedge mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz > This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is > used for posting topics related to SDR software development and > experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software. > _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
