[Faust]

Hello,

Firstly, I was uncertain whether to post this thread in the Mac Pro or MacBook Pro area, so I settled with the Lounge. Please move if inappropiate.

I've long been thinking about how I can best secure my working environment. My problem is that my one year old Mac Pro is having a few hiccups lately and I'm not sure why. A few things that have happened within the last three weeks:

- two crashes (never had a crash before)
- CD drive suddenly not recognized (worked again after a reboot)
- upon rebooting, a loud noise emerges and the system doesn't start (works again after shutting it down and doing a second reboot)

I am not sure how siginificant these issues are. They do make me insecure, however, and I think I need to do something about it because I use my Mac Pro for work and cannot afford to have the Mac collapse without having an alternative.

So, I contemplated on the options I have. I could save up some money and buy a secondary work station, perhaps a MacBook Pro which would probably suffice as an alternative system for a while.

The other option would be to upgrade my current system. I only have the default HD installed with no secondary drive or backup system present. I am aware that this is most risky and dense which is why I'm now trying to see what can be done, so that - if the worst scenario were to ensue and my HD falls apart, breaks, collapses or dies - I need not worry about it and have a good and secure secondary or seconardy and tertiary drive to keep me reasonably safe.

Perhaps it'd also make sense to upgrade on RAM (I currently have four GB installed).

What approach do you consider more sensible?

My current specs:

Mac Pro 2x3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon (four cores)
4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
ATI Radeon X1900
Intel ESB2 AHCI 250 GB harddrive (default drive)
Mac OS X version 10.4.11 (Tiger)


Thanks in advance,

Faust

[iMOTOR]

Are you looking for advice on a backup strategy?

[Faust]

Well, I'm trying to figure out what approach makes more sense and what you do to secure that you always have one working environment ready in case something goes horribly wrong.

[iMOTOR]

The worst thing that can really happen is just losing your files because a disk failed and you had no backup.

The problems you're describing just sound like one-offs to me.

[Faust]

Thanks, iMOTOR.

[mduell]

The chance of your entire system going down is low; the chance of your drive dying is significantly higher.

I'd buy another disk to use for backups for now. If your system experiences a non-disk crash, you can yank the disk and put it in an external enclosure and buy a MBP at that time.