Re: [gentoo-user] rsync backup system

[Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org>]

On Thu, 2009-11-19 at 12:58 -0500, Albert Hopkins wrote:
> > 
> > 4. Should I be comfortable running the entire sync operation every
> > night, or am I jeopardizing the longevity of my HDs?
> > 
> This is a joke.

I should apologize and explain this better.

If you bought a fancy expensive hard drive then it's probably designed
for extremely heavy use and comes with nice coverage by the guy that
sold it to you.  But since you ask this question I'll assume that it's
not the case.

Ok so you bought a relatively cheap heard drive.  But the question seems
irrelevant.  Because these are cheap, mass-produced hard drives you
could do absolutely nothing with them and they could still die tomorrow.
That's the price you pay for cheaper drives.  Cheap hard drives are like
life.  Life is cheap.  You could take all kinds of precautions and still
die tomorrow.  But your drive is cheap and easily replaced (esp. if it's
still under warranty).  Your data on the other hand is not.  I'd rather
have a dead drive with the data backed up than a dead drive with no
backup.  Drives are so cheap nowadays it's a non-issue.  I'm actually
hoping my 2-year old drive dies soon because it will give me an excuse
to go out and buy a *bigger* one for the same price.   But I feel
comfortable with that because I keep backups.