Looking for Recommendations on Storage

[Hippigypsy]

I run a single seat of autocad and I'm not on the network-and they don't want me on the network, it's a small office and the network is too small to accomodate my Cadd files. I've been backing up my work on CD's, which is time consuming and probably not the safest way to go. Anyone out there have any recommendations? I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Cathryn

[Glenn Pope]

I would say get two hard drives. One as your main hard drive for the OS, programs, and files. The other one will be for your daily backup. Think about getting a raid controller. You can set up were anything that is written to the first hard drive is also written to the second.

For off site storage you can get a DVD writer. But there is a question on how long the disk will last. There are also external hard drives for back up. A good one is Maxtor's One Touch (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/?epi_menuItemID=6adb6b8313633595062e6be791346068&epi_menuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&epi_baseMenuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&channelpath=/en_us/Products/External%20Hard%20Drives). Get the the firewire version. This might mean you will need to get a firewire card, but they are cheap.

[Hippigypsy]

thanks again!
Cathryn

[JasonSelf]

Rather than getting another drive and storing the backup files on a hard drive that does not remove I would suggest looking into something like the iomega rev drive. I think there was an advertisment in the last cadalyst, but you can take a look at it here (http://www.iomega.com/na/products/family-save.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=16006169&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=63191&bmUID=1094238190098)

[arcadia_x27]

Personally I'd stay away from an Iomega soloution lor long term storage as you really dont know how long the company will continue support for their products or whether or not theyll even be availabe in 5 years, and considering the price of the REv product and its media. You could put a removable Hard drive cage in your Workstation with a 40 or 60 GB hard drive for less than the Iomega drive would cost and it would give you the same capacity ans the drive for a fraction of the cost. A Rev drive is 400 dollars plus 60 dollars per disk.(as per the Iomega site) A removable hard drive cage is about 20 dollars plus probably about 60 to 70 dollars for a 40GB hard drive (they go for about 70 dollars Canadian funds in my part of the world) for a quarter of the cost you get the same storage capacity

If its long term storage of Data you're looking for then I'd go with a Tape Backup. It will outlast just about any other storage soloution. Yes it a little slower but its an industry standard and there will probably always be hardware and software that will be able to work with it.
Just my 2 cents :)