RAID: Redundant Array of (originally Inexpensive) Independant Disks - The theory was that you could take 10 40megabyte drives, and using a hardware card, trick the computer into thinking it was ONE single 400 megabyte drive, which was seriously more expensive than the ten 40 meg drives.
It wasn’t long before the experts realized that using the same technology that two other tricks could be used. By sharing data across disks, the computer could access that data faster because the bottleneck was always the harddrive->computer interface, still is even today. This is called striping. Further, using the same technology, they could trick the computer into thinking two identical drives were in fact one single drive of the same capacity. Why is this good? because the same data would exist completely on two seperate drives. Even if one drive failed, the data would be safe and secure in another drive. This is called mirroring.
The neat trick is that the different forms of RAID can be overlaid, creating both data security AND increased data throughput.
It used to be that assembling a RAID array required a fairly expensive daughter card. With the advances in modern motherboards, the latest higher-end boards now included a limited RAID capability built into the hard drive controllers. SATA is both faster, more capable, and has a smaller physical footprint, making the interfaces for desktop and laptop drive universal now.
In my system, I have two drives which are exact duplicates of each other, there-by insuring that a hardware failure of one drive will not endanger my considerable amount of irreplaceable data… pictures, songs, videos, drawings, etc. The only downside to this design is that if a natural disaster, lightning strike, fire, flood could all damage both drives completely. My solution is to have a hardware drawer which fits into one of my 5.25 drive bays, and carries a removable hard drive. Using two drives, swapped every few days, the computer will automatically copy all data on the existing two raid mirrors in the computer over to the swappable drive, ensuring that I’ll never lose more than a weeks worth of work.
The only benefit I see to Cloud computing is that the backing up and safety of the data falls to someone else. I don’t trust many people to have access to my stuff… no one in fact, especially google. they just do it so they have additional sources of data to search through. Though I use Google for just about EVERYTHING I do online.
If you are interested in this computer stuff, please, by all means jump over to http://www.soundbytes.org The SoundBytes team features three gents, Nick Steve and Dave, have combined more than 100years of personal experience with computers. Nick today is the primary Linux gent. Dave is the resident Windows gent while Steve fills out the triumvirate with a heaping knowledge of the MacOS. Steve follows up his MacOS value with iOS as well, while Nick and Dave are both Android power users.
Finally, they have pooled their talents in data safety as well as computer security and developed a second site, www.securitytango.com which helps users develop full security system for their computers: anti-malware, firewall, etc with both flare and humor.
The really COOL part of the SoundBytes mythos is that they have their radio broadcasts archives on their site, going all the way back to Dec. 2001. Like me, if you can’t be online to listen to their live show, Saturdays at Noon on Member-Supported Jazz 90.1, then you can catchup with all the latest computer news by downloading the podcast, most times by 8pm that evening.
Mik, thanks for the info. I have a free hosting company for my FCCorp.US domain, and an edit to the DNS info allows my mail service to be forwarded to google, so when I login into gmail with the right account, I actually get my email for the fccorp.us domain.