Re: I'm back
- From: "Ben" <[MySigninName]_@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:59:55 +0100
"Jane Vernon" <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:79ef34F1peifoU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I seem to be back. Laptop had dust removed. That's all. They didn't
even re-install Windows, the failure of which was the symptom it was sent
with. Still, Windows did re-install.
I'm still extrememly grumpy about the thing and extensive questioning from
any helpful umrat is likely to result in my calling her/him a patronising
git ;) I'm a normal person, living in normal domestic surroundings with
quite enough intelligence to work out that the fact that three other Dell
laptops have lived in the same environments without dust being a problem
confirms my estimation of my home being normal.
The last Dell tech support person suggested I buy an external drive. I
said that implied he thought I could not rely on my Dell laptop and he
replied that he did not think one could totally rely on anything.
Well, fair enough. But does this mean that I should live in a permanent
state of worry? I mean, if external storage sites may be thought
insecure, CDs are damagable, external drives have a limited life (how
would I know when that had been reached?) and computers are subject to
random failures because of normal amounts of dust, how is one ever to
relax that information is safe? This is actually a serious question, btw,
as well as being part of a general rant ;)
The technician also said that yes, you can take the back off a laptop and
clean with compressed air from time to time. I had never heard of this
being possible/advisable with a laptop, though I do it with my desktop
once or twice a year. Does anyrat else do this with a laptop?
It's not that I don't do backups. It's that the computer failed four days
after the latest backup. I lost some of the best photos I've taken :(
All attempts to get Dell to help me rescue any data eventually failed.
I'm sure if I'd been prepared to lose the use of my computer for the next
few months and wait till I could pay a private IT bod in UK, they could
have been saved, but I can't do that long without my computer.
Dust or no dust, any disk on any computer in any environment can fail at any
time (hence your use of the word "random"). There are laws of averages which
indicate how often it is likely to happen, but it could happen in 10,000
years time or right now. So you don't know when a disk reaches end of life
until it happens (or if you're lucky, it'll start behaving oddly shortly
before failure, giving you a chance to rescue data before it dies).
This being the case, everyone has to take a view on the amount of
time/effort/money they want to spend ensuring nothing is ever lost against
the value of those potential losses. In large data center environments with
critical data, everything is replicated in real-time to a secondary set of
disks (often in another location in case the first meets some catastrophic
event), and database log files will be archived off every 10 minutes or
less. The home/small business scenario cannot afford such expensive
contingencies, so daily or every-N-days backup has to suffice.
Adopt a policy. Follow it rigorously. Accept the potential consequences
(e.g. N-days lost data).
Personally, I never delete photos off my camera until they are safely stored
in at least TWO other locations, e.g. PC's disk and a backup.
(Hope this doesn't come across as patronising - I don't think I want to be
called a git :-)
.
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