hmmm

It seems it's already enabled.

I've got a really dodgy version of XP installed atm, so I have to boot into safe mode and whatnot otherwise it wont boot.

But anyway, in safe mode, I have dual, but when i finally get on it normally, only the one?

A cock version of XP perhaps?

Im reverting back to my trusty version and also putting on Suse as soon as I get my 210 gig of downloaded crap onto disk anyway, so I'll let you know if that solves it lol


Off topic, but does anyone have any idea of the reliablity of DL DVDs?

I keep A LOT of stuff archived on disks you see, and I've tried tapes - what a load of wank they were - lost me hundreds of gigs of data!! so I'm stuck with SL DVDs till I find a better solution.

Is it personal stuff or business critical stuff?

DVD after 3 years you need to swap upgrade media.
They can last 4 years but personally 3 years is my limit.

crc error begin to creep in.

find a oldest one, copy it too your hard drive
no errors your good for a while longer.

of course the quality of your media will vary the results
and storage temps. But in your house joe 3 years mate.

I wouldnt bother with DVD or tape etc, theres no point when one considers the cost of hard drives nowadays. Here some prices on PATA hdd's atm:

80GB - £22 incl VAT
160GB - £27 incl VAT
250GB - £36 incl VAT
320GB - £42 incl VAT
500GB - £75 incl VAT

Even the external drives are cheap as chips nowadays:

160GB - £43 incl VAT
320GB - £55 incl VAT
400GB - £64 incl VAT
500GB - £76 incl VAT

So DVD's and the like are a stupid idea in this day and age. They are okay for archiving sometimes, but I would never rely on a DVD, they have been known to degrade within a matter of years.

Also, one can consider remote backups nowadays, I can get ahold of 200GB of RSync FTP space for as little as £6.00 per month through some of my contacts!!

Just out of curiosity Joe, how comes ya going to SuSe Linux? I know its a popular flavour in Europe, but have you considered Unbuntu? I am seriously considering giving it a whirl on my laptop in the next few months. Its supposed to be the most user friendly Linux OS available, and if its good enough for Dell to sell pre-installed on their desktop PC's as an alternative to Windows, it must be pretty good.

It's personaly stuff mainly (bit o' porn here an there too ) things like photos, videos, music, games, films, work, rare previous editions of software, just anything I download (which is almost everything)

Im going to Suse as I love the amazing graphics effects and it was just a random choice. It offers multiple desktop display which u can spin like a cube to change desktop. (not sure if other versions offer this)

I've never trusted harddrives for any data archiving as they always seem to fail on me and plus I have a lot of data to store - I probably have well over 1Tb of data on disk - collected over about 8 years, but never thought of 2 or more 500Gb HDD, could be onto something there Matty

I started archiving using CD-Rs wayy before DVD-Rs became available, but all of the CD-R's that I first used are still going strong. But I might put them onto DVD to save on physical space.

I always use Datawrite Titanium DVDs and they are kept well out of the light unless I need something off them.

Hey matty since you had your laptop on for so long does it get super hot? cuz had mine on for like 20 hours now an gettin quite hot like. got any tips how to cool it down lol

An i dont mean lift it up an blow under it haha, like any settins i can modify.

DVD's work for me as in "Archiving"
Stuff that i want to keep but unlikely to want to access.

Also mission critical stuff / wiki and cruisewirral stuff
backed up on to DVD when i think "O bollox" havn't backed that up for a while lol.

For important stuff i have, a sync program that sync's files
across my pc and laptop = 2 copies.

Every week my hard drives are ghosted onto a external drive.

It works for me

My laptops always running very warm (its a desktop Pentium 4, so its a hot CPU), but its never really that hot unless im doing loadsa things.

Its running quiet and cool most of the time lately. I wouldnt worry too much about ye laptop gettin hot fella, people always say you shouldnt have em on for long, but I think I am proving them wrong atm, nearly 8 days solid with a desktop processor in a laptop (desktop CPU's run much hotter then laptop ones) and no problems at all.

i was going to suggest online backups such as the one provided by resellers of IBM's Tivoli software.

Would probably end up costing to much if it is just personal stuff.

Plus, i know my suggestion is going to end up turning into an argument about how tape backup strategys are better or something?

Nah tapes are utter wank.

Unless you've got decent (high £££) software, they are slow to read from and often don't read properly - It was with microsoft backup or somthing like that which I used to use.

Online backups are a good idea, but I dont have the bandwidth or the time to transfer that amount of data and also, It'd cost me to store it all.

I need something physical locally...like DVDs lol