I am going to try and explain what I have learned over the many years of using many computers – to try and present what I feel is a good layout for your media so that you stop loosing important files by silly mistakes. While this is not the be all and end all of how to use a computer, it will help you stop having duplicates, needing to keep backing up multiple times and pay for services online.
The Single computer
If you have one computer and this one computer has only one drive, then I suggest you partition the drive so that it has a main C: Drive and another, much larger D: Drive that will hold all the data. On the C: Drive, you need to install your Windows, Office product and various other utilities – we shall call this the base build. I would suggest once you have this updated and the way you need it, I would invest in a external HD, a bootable CD (such as Ultimate Boot CD for Win) so that you can make an image of the HardDrive at this stage – the resulting image size should then not be too big. The beauty of the imaging aspect is that should the computer not work to plan months later, you can get the computer almost back to speed very quickly.
I mentioned a D: Drive – this can be used to install all the Games and various other media. If the machine then needs a complete rebuild, the D: Drive will remain intact each time provided you pick the right options of course.
More then one computer
If you have more then on computer and wish to share everything around, I shall explain how I have set up my computers with minimal cost on extra hardware.
The first stage was to get a Router that not only supported the N Standard (300mbps) but also had Gigabit Ethernet (4 ports). The reason for Gigabit is the sheer speed it can move data around and most of my computers have a GIgabit port already. From the router, this goes to a Gigabit Switch (5 port) – this is to take up the slack and allow all the computers on the network to have access to full Gigabit speed.
External Drives
Data storage for files such as movies, music and so forth do not need amazing speed and you have a choice of buying a normal (and very cheap) External Drive – 1TB Drives are now very cheap indeed. If you have a laptop spare, you can share the drive from the laptop running Windows or Linux and leave this tucked away in the background. The beauty of a Laptop is it will carry on running even if you have a power cut and will use the least amount of electricity and make no noise if left on.
Network Attacked Storage
If you happy to spend the money, you can buy a NAS Box (Network Attached Storage) which has a RJ45 connector and can also serve up iTunes, act as a Webserver and so forth. You can buy single drive versions (much cheaper), dual and so on. Remember that the price quoted online is often without drives unless they are single drive boxes and will be as expensive empty as a whole 1.5TB External USB Drive. The good thing about them is you can plug them into a network point and forget about them.
Storing Movies
As I own a WDTV device – I store all my movies across two drives at the moment, this been 1TB and 500GIG Iomega drives. This is sticking all your eggs in one basket though, if the drive fails – I loose the lot. The 1TB Drive is mostly BluRay movies though and as I only use the drive when watching on the TV – it should last a lot longer. I also happen to have a lot of movies also stored on DVD, so only involves copying them all should I loose them.
Central Storage
It makes sense from the above that I have my important media away from the main computer – this means even if I wipe this computer today, I loose none of my important data. I am a gamer and I get to know which games can be moved about and which require install to work, such as any EA Game for example.
In my example I have a Laptop which is running Windows 7 and connected to this is a 320 External Drive (USB) plus a 60Gig 2.5” External Drive plus the computer itself has a 160 Drive fitted. I store all my files I need to share out such as drivers, applications and such on this computer. As it is a laptop, it makes zero noise and does not need a screen open to see what is happening. I can use Remote Desktop built into windows to control the screen as required. I also happen to run Mangos (WoW Server) from there plus a Virtual Ubuntu Machine.
The rest of the computers
The other computers (apart from my main one) does not need big harddrives as it goes and they have either 120GIG drive or 250GIG drive – all they need is the OS and application installed – no storage of Data is required. As the Laptop is on 24/7 and acting a server, I can map a drive to each computer for easy access to the files.
Stop loosing data when formatting drives
Before SATA came along we only had IDE and this meant Master/Slave set up. Windows was happy with this and presented the Master as the first drive and the slave as the second. Once we add SATA to the mix, depending on the motherboard, this can mix up the order of the drives. For example on one of my machines, the IDE is always listed first while another lists the SATA as first.
I know from the past when using Norton Ghost and having two drives of the same size (and even make) can confuse the hell out of anybody. I have done what most probably has done and that is ghost an empty drive to a full drive – loosing the lot in the process.
The best remedy for this is a simple one and only needs some common sense – keep the DATA drive OUT of the computer until you have finished installing windows on the current drive. If you plug in the second drive and it fails to boot – a simple look in the BIOS can sort out the order in which it looks to boot drives.
Thoughts
While this is by no means the be all and end of of information or how to do things, I know I have not lost any major data for MANY years and nor have I reverted to using online back up services either. The OS you can get back, the Office 2007 you can also get back but the documents you have wrote, the pictures you created and such you cannot. Blank DVD are very cheap and most machines have such a device – use it..
