A couple of months ago, OWC Stephen wrote an article that dealt with RAID units not being a “true” backup for your data. This caused confusion for some people; after all, RAID has built-in redundancy (it’s the first letter, for goodness’ sake!), so data should be completely safe, right?
Well… not really.
RAID will protect you against drive failure; that’s exactly what it’s designed to do. However, there are a lot of other things that can cause data loss. For example, if you knock the average RAID enclosure off your desk, there’s a good chance both drives are going to be damaged. If both drives are damaged, then anything on that unit is gone.
What it comes down to is that an actual “backup” consists of at least two copies of the files you want to keep.
- the original file (usually on your main hard drive)
- a copy of the file (preferably on some sort of external device that can be moved off-site)
Ideally, you’d want three copies – your original and two copies – one on-site and one off-site in case of things like fires, tornadoes or theft. That, however, is an article unto itself, full of “exciting” topics like “backup drive rotation scheduling” and “methodology comparison.” Yeah… about as exciting as that Economics class we all had to take in high school, in that stuffy classroom which, despite being windowless, somehow still admitted the slightly disturbing smells emanating from the cafeteria kitchens just down the hall.
Instead, we’re going to talk about something much more exciting: a cross-country auto race. No, I haven’t watched Cannonball Run one too many times; I’ve got a viable (if somewhat bizarre) analogy going here; just follow along. Article Continues…
You know that feeling when you’ve upgraded to a new operating system and you find that your favorite peripheral doesn’t work any more? We sure do; it stinks.
The OWC video team has been in high gear these last few weeks, kicking out several videos showing you how to upgrade your Macs and showing what those upgrades can do!
Other World Computing announced today it has added four new 750GB 7200 RPM models to its award-winning OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro™ bus powered portable storage solution line. The Mercury On-The-Go Pro is a high-performance, pocket-sized portable storage solution for Mac or PC users featuring FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 3, and/or USB 2.0 interfaces for real world data transfer speeds up to 170MB/s. Available with up to 1.0TB of storage capacity, the Mercury On-The-Go Pro can hold up to one million JPEG photos, 500 DVD movies, 76 hours of digital video, or 350,000 MP3 songs.
Every Friday, we let you know of any price drop on OWC or NewerTech storage solutions that may have occurred during the week. Most of the time, it’ll be a single model drive that gets this reduction. This week, though, we’ve got price drops on two different On-The-Go Pro models for twice the savings!
We’re well into the Summer season now (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere) which is a popular time for vacations. Whether you’re visiting relatives, traveling 