Vivienne

Will do and will make sure that it is either 5 or 6. Thanks, Kelly.

Kelly: This is exactly what the tech told us. He said that if a drive fails, we can carry on as though nothing happened. That is the only appeal to us to go with RAID. He didn't say what would happen if it was another type of hardware failure. Surely there must be something similiar so that you can keep working ?? Right now, our off site strategy is about a week behind - that is we would lose a week. The daily 'offsit' backups are on a USB stick which is only offsite when my son is offsite as he wears it around his neck. Because it is a home business we cannot just take the backup home. :-) We shall have to rethink this - thanks for the reminder! Thanks, Kelly. Vivienne

Hi Kelly :-) He said he likes to have 2 mirrors of the operating system (3 hdds for C: ) Nothing has been decided. If we were interested he was going to open the computer and have a look. :-) He is a new tech and has not worked on this computer before. There is only one backup on the USB Stick. We have 5 .5 GB of data backed unto an 8 GB stick. We have three sticks which we rotate. The seven days of backup is done on an external hdd. We have two that we rotate. Vivienne

Dalo and Seth: Thank you both for your replies. Dalo: We can't do that as all the data we wish to save is already on the drive. What problems may this cause ? If we wanted to continue to have the data on a separate drive, do we have room in our case for four drives ? (Please see earlier post for specifications.) Dalo, thank you. It is not confusing at all. You are very good at explaining things. Seth: If the data was lost it could be the end of the business - so thank you for bringing up that concern. We take 7 days of backup off site every week and we backup to an 8 GB USB stick ( which my son wears around his neck ) daily.

Dalo: Thanks very much for your reply. This was our first choice and in fact we did confidently do this for about six months. We, however, eventually noticed that some files were missing. At first the company said maybe they were open (or something to that effect). After they had us do several things to verify, we all gave up. We used another company, highly recommended, and the same thing happened. We have no more confidence in doing this. We now do a backup every night and take it off site. Question #2 :-) We have an Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG case. The specs say that it has 10 drive bays: Front accessible - 4x5.25", 2x3.5" Internal - 4x3.5" We have a floppy drive and a cd rom drive and a card reader. (For some reason Belarc shows 2 card readers.) We now have our operating system and program on C: Drive and our documents on D: Drive. What room do we have to add drives ? Is the C: mirrored to one drive and the D: mirrored to another drive ? Or do we have to have everything on one drive which is then mirrored to another drive ? Is one way preferable to another ? Thanks! Vivienne

Hi We have a tech who looks after our business computer. He suggested that we have a RAID setup. He said that he has been working with RAID systems for many years (20) or so, and has set up mega systems and small ones. He said it is the standard by which all large companies operate and he thinks it is a good one for a small company as well. Ours is just one computer. The RAID setup appeals to us because we will not lose time nor data if there is a disk failure. I started to do some research to learn as much as I could before giving him the go ahead. I was hoping you would help me with the things that I really do not understand ( which is almost everything!). Question 1: He said that the Perc Card is best. I do not understand why he would be recommending that when we have an Asus ATV Deluxe board. The specs are as follows: Floppy disk 2 channels ATA/133 2 channels Serial ATA 150 via VT8237 south bridge with RAID 0,1 support 1 channel ATA/133 via Promise PDC20378 with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support 2 channels Serial ATA 150 via Promise PDC20378 RAID with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 support Is this not good enough to support a relaible RAID configuration ? Is our motherboard's RAID capability inferior ? Thanks! Vivienne

Dalo, thank you! I shall check this when I am next at that computer. (It is my daughter in law's.) In the meantime, I shall check my own computer. :-) Thanks very much - it sounds easy enough. :-) Vivienne

Randy and Dalo Thanks for your replies. I am going to leave it alone as everything is working much better now. Dalo, just from curiosity, how would you know what setting to have the ram at ? I am comfortable enough with the BIOS. I am not comfortable at all with opening the case and working with hardware. This is just a curiosity question, however. At the end, I am going to leave well enough alone. :-) Vivienne

Dalo: I am afraid that this is something that I do not know how to do. When I looked into overclocking many years ago, I agreed with some people's conclusion that if you do not know what you are doing, it is better to overbuy than overclock. :-) I do appreciate your input. Vivienne

I am going to leave well enough alone. Thanks again, Seth. Vivienne

Hi Seth :-) The specs are exactly the same but if it will not make a difference, I shall just leave it alone. I have another computer that also uses that memory. It is 2 x 500 MB - would 256 MB make a difference there ? Thanks!! Vivienne

Hi We have a computer that had 512 mb memory made up of a kit of 2x256 MB. We bought *exactly* the same memory for upgrading except as a kit of 2x1 GB. I was expecting the technician to put in the 2 GB memory and leave one of the 256 MB in, thus using all three available slots. He, however, just put in the 2 GB and gave us back the 2x256 MB sticks. Can a computer not accept kindly different size ram even if both are the same ? Both are Corsair with exactly the same specs. To use up the other slot, do I need a 1 GB or because they are 'twins', can I not use the third slot ? Thanks. Vivienne

Hi Help4me: Thanks very much for your reply. I bought a program called AVS Video. I am still learning how to use it but it seems to do everything that I require. I just have to learn how! Thanks, again. Vivienne

It doesn't look like it would do this but thanks very much for trying!!! :-)

Randy: The trouble is I do not know how to make a single file that Windows Movie Maker can read. I think the VOB file is probable what is needed but WMM won't read it. :-(