I may have to buy one

[TheFaQQer]

You can use them for Bitcoins - I have no idea of what this is all about - something for the Geeks

Bitcoin: A licence to print money or useless virtual currency? | T3

You need a botnet to make it work, really.

Or lots of expensive GPUs that you can use for high performance work to mine for coins.

[DodgyAgent]

You need a botnet to make it work, really.

Or lots of expensive GPUs that you can use for high performance work to mine for coins.

What is a botnet? Isnt that what Atw does?

[nomadd]

Amazon have the Crucial M4 512GB for £514 and some pence at the moment.

I've been using an M4 for about 6 months now. It's been terrific as a boot and applications drive. Have a separate hot-swap drive bay in my case for "bulk" stuff and backups to normal hard disks.

Make sure you update the M4 to the latest firmware. The 0009 firmware gave a significant boost to performance, and the 0309 fixes a S.M.A.R.T. bug. These are cummulative, so just use the 0309. And do it from a USB stick and leave AHCI enabled, contrary to what's in the upgrade document. See the Crucial forums for details (can't recommend syslinux highly enough, excellent freebie: HOWTO: Update SSD Firmware with bootable USB Stick - Crucial Community)

[OwlHoot]

Amazon have the Crucial M4 512GB for £514 and some pence at the moment.

Tempting, especially for a fast reboot.

But my issue with SSDs, especially for C drives or equivalent, is the finite number of write cycles.

I imagine it would be a very Bad Idea to use them for paging space for example.

[Joeman]

Tempting, especially for a fast reboot.

But my issue with SSDs, especially for C drives or equivalent, is the finite number of write cycles.

I imagine it would be a very Bad Idea to use them for paging space for example.

The firmware inside the SSD ensures that the same memory isnt constantly written to, so in practice you have little to worry about, especially on really big SSD's.

[nomadd]

Tempting, especially for a fast reboot.

But my issue with SSDs, especially for C drives or equivalent, is the finite number of write cycles.

I imagine it would be a very Bad Idea to use them for paging space for example.

I use my SSD drive VERY heavily. And I have the Windows paging file on it.

SSDLife quotes that I'm golden until mid 2020 based on current usage patterns. Think I'll have upgraded by then...

[Ignis Fatuus]

Why do people still backup to physical media? I keep all documents in the cloud, and my NAS drive backsup to amazon S3. Hardware requirements are low and my machines are largely disposable.

Because I spend most of my time with no or slow internet, don't like letting my data out of my sight, don't want to trust someone else, and don't want to subscribe to anything. YMMV but you did ask.

[wim121]

Why do people still backup to physical media? I keep all documents in the cloud, and my NAS drive backsup to amazon S3. Hardware requirements are low and my machines are largely disposable.

Because I spend most of my time with no or slow internet, don't like letting my data out of my sight, don't want to trust someone else, and don't want to subscribe to anything. YMMV but you did ask.

I was going to reply without reading all the thread pages but I can see Ignis pretty much summed it up.

All my media is backed up from disc, however due to the amount, this is impractical to backup and I can imagine the issues with saving this in the cloud.

As for all my personal documents, as Ignis said, I dont like others having my data. That is part and parcel of the modern world, however all my documents have my name and other sensitive information on. Some of the biggest companies have been known to have security breaches and then some others have been known to sell on captured data of customers without their permission. It is a massive security risk and against good operating policies.

Also on the subscription note, yes my tape drive did cost a bit, but now I have multiple tapes that will last for quite a while, cleaning tape, etc. So now I have no further monthly costs, unlike I would with a subscription. Also I can schedule a backup for any time period. Even if I was uploading to "the cloud", I would have to do so at times dictated to me by my ISP which isnt always convenient.

[d000hg]

don't like letting my data out of my sight, don't want to trust someone else

Is that the modern equivalent of keeping all your money in cash under the floorboards?

[Joeman]

I was going to reply without reading all the thread pages but I can see Ignis pretty much summed it up.

All my media is backed up from disc, however due to the amount, this is impractical to backup and I can imagine the issues with saving this in the cloud.

As for all my personal documents, as Ignis said, I dont like others having my data. That is part and parcel of the modern world, however all my documents have my name and other sensitive information on. Some of the biggest companies have been known to have security breaches and then some others have been known to sell on captured data of customers without their permission. It is a massive security risk and against good operating policies.

Also on the subscription note, yes my tape drive did cost a bit, but now I have multiple tapes that will last for quite a while, cleaning tape, etc. So now I have no further monthly costs, unlike I would with a subscription. Also I can schedule a backup for any time period. Even if I was uploading to "the cloud", I would have to do so at times dictated to me by my ISP which isnt always convenient.

So you keep all your data onsite, or round a mates house... I'd argue you have more chance of it going missing from your house or you mates house, than from a reputable cloud hosting company..
Encrypt and upload, no hacker in the wordl would bother de-crypting your files when there are easier picking to be had..