Backup

[Grant Stockly]

Remember to backup anything that you don't want to loose! And never store the backup in the same location as the original!

I just lost my main working hard drive containing 200GB+ of Altair 680/8800 and Kenbak kit files. I came home from work and the case was practically melting! It was so hot that after I disassembled the case I burnt my hand on the metal of the hard drive. This is one of those vented but not fan cooled external hard drive enclosures from western digital.

What had happened is the power supply died. The hard drive would try to spin up, the power supply would fold back, and the hard drive would somewhat spin down. This process must have been going for hours. The high current motor start process heated the hard drive up a ton!

No worries about the kits though! I had a current backup. Now that I have actually "lost" a drive with such important data, one backup isn't good enough. I found myself crossing my fingers hoping the backup was good. It took 9 hours to copy and verify all of the files, so I had a hard time sleeping last night thinking about it!