Using a USB thumb drive for backups?
in [Mac Systems]
|
From: Paul Sture on 5 Jan 2010 09:41 In article <hgt5rv01j72(a)news4.newsguy.com>, J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to(a)but.see.sig> wrote: > > If you're talking about the old CDC disk packs and disk drives like these > <http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/cdc/discs/brochures/ProductLine_May73.pdf> I > can say that the 300 MB disk packs weighed 25 pounds each (and cost US$10,000 > when new...) and the drives for them weighed in excess of 500 pounds and > were, yes, the size of a washing machine. A big washing machine. The first > place I worked for had three CDC 9790 units. We did not move them unless we > had to, and when we did, we got out the trolley and a couple guys from Motor > Maintenance. The damn things did move all by themselves when in operation > unless their feet were properly set. This tended to cause head crashes, > resulting in our needing to replace the disk pack ($10k, remember) and all 20 > of the read-write heads at $512 each, plus recalibrating the drive with a > $25k engineering disk pack... and if any of the replacement heads weren't > properly set, the engineering pack might crash, requiring the replacement of > a all 20 heads _and_ getting a new engineering pack. That got old real fast > and we replaced them with 250 MB fixed disks which lived in one of the racks. > And, of course, we had to get out the trolley and the boys from Motor Maint > to move the silly things back to where they were supposed to be... I was using the CDC 9766 drives (300 MB unformatted). I have no idea what the drives or the disk packs cost, but for software upgrades I'd carry a couple of pre-built packs to all 6 client sites (they were all within a couple of hundred yards of the office). I never realised I was carrying around kit worth close to my annual salary (a bit hazy on exchange rates, but it must have been close). Luckily we didn't experience the head crashes you did, nor the one detailed here: <http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=6331&mid=38572> > At about the same time I had sitting on my desk at home a Mac 128 updated to > Plusdom to which was attached a 40 MB drive. My Mac had 4 whole MB of RAM > (the $1.5 million supermini had 5.5 MB...) and a 32 bit CPU running at 8 MHz > (the supermini was 24 bit, yes, really, 24 bit, running at 5 MHz...) so my > home machine had a fairly significant fraction of the total storage available > to the supermini and was faster and had better graphics as well. (The > supermini had VT-100 class green screens, except for the control room, where > there were 19" colour screens for the system control staff...) > > Of course, the smallest capacity thumb drive I still have has more capacity > than the disk pack, (512 MB...) and I can get a brand new 4 GB thumb drive > for under $15, probably for under $10 if I try. The last I heard, thumb drives are being given away in all sorts of promotions. When I think what it cost me to replace a 150 MB drive in 1992... -- Paul Sture |