The Preventative Maintenance Item

Dec 27 19:03 UTC 1992

About a week ago, the fan on my computer started making some ugly
sounds.  Oh no, I thought, the fan's starting to die.  Nothing felt
like it was getting hot, though, and I could feel air flowing into and
out of the case, so I knew the fan was still moving air.  Since we
were hosting both Christmas Even and Christmas festivities here, I was
pretty busy and ignored it.

Yesterday, however, the sound got to me, and I pulled the case off.
YOW!  There was enough dust and cat hair in there to make a small
kitten.  (Well, not really, but it's a good image.)  After cleaning the
hair and dust out, and buttoning up the case, I am happy to report that
my computer is back to its old quiet self.

The moral of the story is that you might think about doing the same to
your computer, i.e. cleaning out the dust and cat hair periodically.

Please post any other preventative maintenance tips you might have.

response 2 of 22:

Dec 28 01:45 UTC 1992

Some might say that the best way to get rid of cat hair is to get rid
of the cat...  ;)

response 4 of 22:

Jan 3 20:33 UTC 1993

        The best preventative maintenance there is, for any computer with a
hard drive, is to do regular backups.  Every hard drive is going to fail
some day.  You're never going to know in advance when your hard drive is
due to fail.  And when it does, your chances of getting all your data off
it are mighty slim, unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars to
have a data recovery place recover it for you.
        You can get really cheap ($250) 120/250 MB tape drives these days
that connect to your floppy controller.  The "250 MB" comes from data
compression, which is done by the software.  The software is tolerably
easy to use.  You just run the backup program, tell it what to back up,
and let it run.  The drives are slow (~1 MB/minute), but you don't have to
watch it while it's doing it's job.  Run it overnight, or while you go out
to the store.
        A tape drive is worth it, because most people will not do regular
backups onto floppy disk (it's too much trouble) and a tape is much more
reliable for long term storage anyway.

response 6 of 22:

Jan 4 04:54 UTC 1993

I looked at it at one time.  It's really not worth it, because unless
you're willing to press buttons on the VCR, you need to get a
special VCR that can be computer-controller.  Plus, how close is your
VCR to your computer?  In this house, at least, it's several
rooms away, which means moving the VCR when you want to do backups.

I think a better idea would be to get an 8mm DVT or 4mm DAT SCSI
tape, which was actually *intended* to store digital information.

response 8 of 22:

Jan 4 13:38 UTC 1993

Now there's an idea for that old Beta machine someone gave me...!

response 10 of 22:

Jan 5 06:17 UTC 1993

Hmm.  On my system 21MB/disk would be too much media; that would work
out to about 19 disks!  I'm quite happy with my SCSI Archive 2150S;
it's a QIC streamer that gets around 5MB/min and 250MB/tape.  With
that capacity I can back up my entire system in about an hour, onto
two tapes.

response 12 of 22:

Jan 10 00:41 UTC 1993

Yep.  Two 203MB drives, minus filesystem overhead and 24MB for swap.

response 14 of 22:

Jan 30 03:41 UTC 1993

I know someone with an Exabyte 8mm, and I believe he said he can back up
2.3 Gigabytes (without data compression, about 4.5GB with compression)
on a $10 8mm tape from K-Mart. Very impressive. 

QIC tape drives are getting very inexpensive. CCS Inc. has Archive
QIC-80 tape drives (250MB) for only $225.

response 16 of 22:

Feb 28 21:31 UTC 1993

1. True. He backs up his BBS, and he says on each tape he'll get at most
   one correupt .ZIP file. Not too bad for a couple of GB.
 
2. I usually only get about a 1.5-1.7 compression ratio -- probably only
   about 180-200 MB on a QIC 80 tape. But those drives are very inexpensive
   and more than adequate for most individual users. 

response 18 of 22:

Dec 21 06:00 UTC 1994

I back up an SE and a PB to a 170 MB SCSI HD. Tape sounds more economical
when you get much bigger, but this is fine for my needs. Also, its just
drag and drop!
And I think I'm due to do it again this week.

response 20 of 22:

Jan 5 03:27 UTC 1995

I just read the article on removable-media drives in the February MacUser.
 They liked the MacProducts Magic SyQuest 270.  The price is $399, and the
270 meg removable disks are advertised for $62-65.  Seeing how it would
take 7 44 meg disks to surpass the storage on a 270, it would make sense
to me to save money for a 270 with one extra disk(one disk comes with each
device), unless you never expected to need more than 120 meg or so of
space. 

response 22 of 22:

Jan 9 03:02 UTC 1995

It is an external drive.  The price is a comparison price from the article
(which I don't have in front of me) & so I think they should have been
comparing apples/apples.  MacUser rated the drive + & + for service and
support, FWIW. I've E-mailed the vendor for more info including specific
information on whether a disk is included or not.  Either way, I'll
probably end up with this or one of the ones you suggest.  I've liked the
idea of these drives, but it took srw's recommendation of the exact use I
had in mind to get me shopping.  The 270's are a 3.5 disk, but MacUser
reports these are durable as far as anyone knows right now.