2 more cents: most of us guys (gals, too) in this hobby have a great deal of cumulative time invested in purchasing and loading FS software; setting it all up - all the airport add-ons, the flight plans, the managers, the lanclases, the environments, the aircraft, the AI stuff: It is reeel hard to get back to "how it was" by doing a fresh Windows install because of a system crash - particularly a boot drive failure. There are a couple of products which will provide a solution - a little more complex and time-consuming to set up than most here, but this is what we do at our College. Students are expert at killing machines. Every virus, illegal software, porny pics, toolbars, links, that you can install during a single class - they do. and it's all ready for the next student to add to an hour later. We used to re-image 1200 pc's every three weeks until we installed "Deep Freeze" 1). "Deep Freeze" captures a picture of your complete hdd, allows a user space for docs, temporary stuff, etc., - (which can be local or remote (i.e. another machine, server, whatever). This works such that after a re-boot - you will have a brand-new computer - exactly as it was when you took the DeepFreeze snapshot as it was installed. To add a new airport, for e.g. you "unfreeze" the pc, do the install, TEST it, and if it's good - "re-freeze" the pc, and get on with the game. If you break it - reboot it. Voila.2). There are times when this isn't enough: hdds DO fail fer sure. So - once the pc is set to where we want it to be - done all the installs and the testing, etc., we use Symantec/Norton's "Ghost" software to make an image of the hard drive, which is then moved to another machine/server. If you do get a hdd failure all that is needed is the boot floppy: it will attach to the other machine and bring down your original image. You are now back in business. The imaging part is a little more complex than I've described here, but a good portion of us can do this, it's not rocket science anymore.The two softwares are foolproof. There are others on the market; I think none are free, but the retail version of "Ghost" is not expensive; I'm not sure about "Deep Freeze".The last thing for protection is not a surge-protection power bar. When the power goes down you may well be dead in the water. There are a number of innexpensive, readily available desktop 3 to 500 watt ups's around in retail stores now. Yes, I know - it's money, money, money. Welcome to the world of IT.regards,pj

>People always seem to want the fastest drives on the market.>My advise: don't do that. Buy slower drives, they last>longer.>Sure your loading times will be a few seconds slower, but if>your drive lasts 10 years instead of 2 it's worth it.How is a slower drive going to last longer than a faster one? I don't think the difference would be that drastic between say a 5,200rpm to a 10,000rpm. Time will tell I suppose.I read somewhere faster drives, in theory, last longer because they don't have to access the disk as much and the data is buffered across quicker so it is accessed less often.I wouldn't necessarily buy "the slower drives", just the more reliable older ones.. which happen to be slower than newer ones available today. 7,200rpm is fairly quick, but I wouldn't go less than 5,200.Pyjamas

They're not. Newer technologies and materials mean that design life hasn't changed, and this applies to the whole pc - not just the drives. Most drives are obsolete over five years, anyway. A ten-year-old drive wil barely hold most FS enthusiasts' data, simply because we have so much. Even a minimal FS9 install we're talking 3.5 - 4 gig. Ten years ago that was about the maximum size for any drive. It's a good drive to put in your pc and then use it - completely - for swap, though. And yes - cache is now between 8 and 16 MB. Not so, ten years ago. And we stopped using 10k drives in our servers a couple of years back. Nowadays - it's 300GB. 15k rpm, 16MB cache, < 9ms access, sata and possibly mirrored in a high-end personal system. If you're running with some of the MegaScenery and FlightEnvironment - type softwares - it's more that "a few seconds" wait time.pj

I replied to his question: "It's in the Bible, isn't it?" Not to the question: "Why is it banned on here"?

Because they are taught that but it is not in scripture. I suggest this site to seek more information: http://www.watchtower.org/, since this may not be the place for such discussions.

In regards to the H*LL thing. I asked this as well a few weeks ago. Because this is a family forum with younger members, the word has been blanked even though it is used quite casually. When you think about it, it's understandable for parents with young kids browsing these forums. End of discussion. Let's not stray from topic any further.Pyjamas

A Month ago I purchased a 300 gig USB drive ($99), which included the case, cabel and powersupply, for my laptop. As I am moving into a Motorhome fulltime, no longer have room for a desktop... With a 120 gig in the laptop, did not have room for all on the desktop. It worked great, I put the FS on the Laptop drive, and a backup on the USB drive. Then, copied all other data, photos (over 9000) MP3's (over 12000), etc.. to the 300 gig, and still have lots of room. All important data has also been copied to R DVD's. Stuff which I need to backup frequently, is on RW Dvd's...

Hi, Having just recovered from a major windows crash while I had a backup with Ghost, I felt that I would be able to recover "NOT"I happened to mention it to my computer builder who came up with the simple way to never have to reinstall windows again ! First off get a copy of Ghost and pick up an extra hard drive the same size as your drive that holds the windows program. For the last time clean up your C drive then make a copy to the extra drive . When your C drive fails ( and it will) simpley replace the drive and you have a freash copy of windows to work with. Now reinstall on the bad drive a freash copy of windows and use it as the backup I can't wait for the holidays to be over so I can pick up a second SATA drive !GOOD LUCKTONY

I'm not as concerned about a hard drive crash as a house fire. We use two types of backups. One for really important data, the other for data that doesn't change as often.Financial (Quicken), e-mail and password data get backed up nightly onto a 128meg USB drive. Weekly, I pull out the drive and switch it with one that's in the safe. That way, if we have a fire, the most important data is in the safe and at most a week old.Secondary data (flight sim, pictures, video) is backed up weekends to an external drive. Then I unplug the drive and put it in the safe. If I take pics or video, I burn them to DVD immediately and store in the safe until the weekend. Once the backup's complete, I shred the DVD's. So everything's either in the safe, or on the hard drive.