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.

22 responses total.

I've found that the best way to get rid of cat hair from between the keys
is to replace the keyboard.




  (Well, it had a problem, so it got replaced
under maintenance contract.)

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

  <<only "some.">> sfsf

        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.

Has anybody ahd any experience with the tape backup done on VCR tape?

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.

$250 ?  For IBM compats, undoubtedly...

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

   (or a floptical drive wouldn't be bad, either... 21megs/disk isn't TOO
much swapping for a backup, and you can get normal use out of it as well
(it's faster than 1mb/minute, anyway!))

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.

   <<wow - size wars now ...>>
  
So that's about 400 Meg worth of disk?

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

  I've got about the same (in fact, virtually exactly the same) and 
am trying to figure out what to do about a tape drive..  The 8mm &
DAT drives are so much nicer than QIC, but they're so *expensive*..

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.

Two comments on that:

1. That $10 8mm tape is probably a video-grade tape, not a data-grade tape.
There *is* a difference, and the difference *will* bite you if you
use video-grade regularly.  Me, I consider my backups important enough
that it's pointless to try to save $5 or $10 on the tapes.

2. QIC-80 drives are "floppy tape" drives, not what's conventionally
regarded as a fullsize cartridge streamer.  And that's only a 120MB
drive, really; if your files compress well, maybe you'll get 250MB...

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. 

Ok, so what's available now in inexpensive (<$250) tape backup systems?
I have a Mac, with 4M RAM, and 20M internal and 120M external drives.

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.

Disks are now so cheap, that Rane has a good point. $269 will buy a
365MB  Quantum Lighning (11ms access 3.5" Low profile) External HD.
[reference: Club Mac ad in MacWeek]
This will let you keep two generations of backup of 180MB worth of primary 
disk. It is much more convenient than tape, because it is random access,
drag and drop.

It is much less expandable though.
DAT (Digital tape backup) systems start much higher, at around $789,
but the hold 1.8GB and the media is cheap and removable, so you can take
your backups off-site.  Tape is better for multi-GB systems. 

Removable Cartridges are a compromise between these.
The cheapest drives, and the only ones close to your budget are the 44M
Syquest drives, which can still be had new for $279 from LLB.
The media cost for additional carts is quite high at $59/40MB, almost $1.5/MB,
so if you really wanted two generation of 180MB, you'd pay $600 more than 
the dixed disk solution.  But if you want less, it costs less, and you get all
of the drag and drop advantages of a disk with the ability to take your
backups offsite. This is a big deal, IMO. I use these.

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. 

Definitely. I own a 44M Syquest only because that was all they made when I 
bought it. It is the MOST expensive way per/megabyte to do backups.
The 270's are a very good idea unless you expect to back up enough to
justify going to a tape system, or unless you want to spend the extra
money for the better reliability of a MO system (and don't mind the
slower speed of MO).

$399 is a really good price. Are you sure that it includes a blank cart?
If not, your real price is $464. You might want to consider ClubMac at $489,
or APS at $499. APS has a great reputation for quality and support.
Both ClubMac and APS include a formatted cart with shareware on it.
Make sure you buy an 'external' one unless you have 5" bay for it.

If it's $399 with an external case and a cart, I'd stay with MacProducts.

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. 

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