You always want to have "enough" backup. Is that one source or two, or ?? I once had a market data backup setup involving FOUR drives.. I inadvertently HOSED ALL 4 OF THEM WITH ONE CLICK OF THE MOUSE... another "shit happens" event. Fortunately I had one more copy in another place. Whew!
If you guys were open to the idea of Windows-8 you could run thin-client desktops and keep your machines off in outer space (the cloud or some hosting service) and never have to worry about local hardware failures or backups, etc.
Good job, that is a nice setup. I didn't mean to attack personally regarding 10 year old software, I have plenty of legacy software from the 90s- that is great fwiw. I usually get annoyed over people still using XP because they dislike 7 for no reason. I use 7 for trading and find it to have all of the great futures XP has that Vista did not. 7 is rock stable, a better UI (you can use the taskbar still if you really want to, just switch it back) and improvements underneath with the installers, better (less annoying) UAC prompt, superior networking troubleshooting and dx11. I do not intend upgrading to 8 for my trading workstation. Even with an antivirus, XP is a security problem imo. If you are only using a software antivirus, a good hacker can still break in. Allot of people do not know that the time an antivirus takes to detect a threat is important, because the antivirus can't be useful if a threat attacks before an antivirus reacts. Like trading, it can only be milliseconds. This is why institutions usually use hardware firewalls as well, such as the great from Barracuda. If you are on a private network, obviously it's not that big of a deal. Mike
If you are running your 2 SSD's in a RAID, you should use a garbage collector. It's easy to do. There is no point in using an SSD for backup. Just use a hard drive for that, backup is not performance intensive.
I picked up a Windows 8 upgrade ISO last night and did a clean install from it painlessly this AM - Total cost $15 + tax per license all you need do is download and run the upgrade assistant from the link below to obtain a $25 discount. Enter a merchant, make and model of a Windows 7 system [no confirmation or S/N's required] I used NewEgg, ASUS, and first system on the list which had windows 7. obtained the promo code / paypal / and downloaded the file. Saved to ISO, and Voila... $16.26 Windows 8 http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/clean-install-windows-8-upgrade.htm at this price I am getting all 5 licenses [max allowed per individual] and updating all my systems over the next few weeks before they close the loophole. Metro is a bit of a nuisance at first, but I am sure I will be able to disable it after a little googling... One option I am looking into to regain the Start button and Windows 7 feel http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-8-classic-shell.html
Not sure what you mean by "one source or two." I have 2 spinners...1 is C drive and 1 is E. I use Casper to clone C to E each weekend, and also clone C to external drive every few months.
What I meant was having "enough". If you have only 1 backup source, what happens if it fails? (You're likely not to know it failed until you need it... and then it's too late.) If you have 2 sources, what happens if both fail? You always want to have "one more than you end up needing"... of course you only *know* what you needed in retrospect... and then it might be too late. ANY backup is better than none (even System Restore). Two backups are better than one, etc.
No RAID here. I know backup is not performance intensive but I was concerned/not knowledgeable about this scenario: If I run SSD for main drive and clone to spinner: if SSD fails and I use spinner for main drive, can I then clone spinner to new SSD with no problems and then use new SSD for main drive? I have done this with spinners only but didn't know if there would be any problems with SSD to HDD to SSD.