I am sick of running backups so thinking of installing two hard drive receptacles and using three removable hard drives in a Grandfather/Father/Son system where only two hard drives would be on-site at any time so that backup would never be any older than two days. Does anyone have experience of removable hard drives? It Seems to me that the cost of running this system is negligible compared to the cost in labour alone of persistent copying!! The pc is not used on the Internet but I'm not sure about the implications of having the OS triplicated (on three drives).

Have you considered a RAID system use two hard drives, one mirroring the other??

it may be more of a pain that you are thinking...unless you are planning to get an external hard drive. because of having to turn off comp, open case, install new hd, return case, wait for bios to find it, load up win, send info to it (which may take some time), turn off comp, open case, remove hard drive, return case, be on your mary way in 30-45 min. if you get an external hard drive then it may be as easy as hooking up usb cable, transfering info (which will be about the same speed), removing usb cable, be on your mary way. for the mirroring to 3 hard drives would be no more of a problem than mirroring to just one, it will only take longer.

I have experience of the hardware aspect of removable hard drives. Generally the hdd itself is fitted in a removable drawyer (with a plug connector at the rear) that slides into a non-removable receptor (with a socket connector at the rear) fitted in a 5.25" bay. The plug and socket are for the power and interface connections. Perhaps it would be easier to have the o/s etc. installed on a non-removable hdd and only the files requiring backup on the removable hdd's. That way you can have any number of generations. Please bear in mind, possibly your system should keep transaction files (maybe in duplicate, with one not on the removable hdd) such that master files can be brought up to date should a later generation master fail. Good luck - keep us posted.

Thanks for the responses. What I have been considering is having each hard disk as a standalone copy of OS and application progs and updated files. There would be no non-removable hard disk. Files would be updated from one disk to another. The only time(s) when all disks would need to be updated would be for OS and/or prog updates. This will make my hard disks completely portable to be used in another PC (with suitable receptor - thanks for your explanation Mike) should that be necessary. Got the idea? In order to boot the pc into action one of the removable hard disks would have to be in place. Any further comments/suggestions appreciated. Thanks again.

Mike - sorry - I omitted to respond to your last paragraph re transaction files. Yes, point taken, this is already done in the backup routine and I thought that the removable hard disks would also cover this aspect. The current daily backup is physically removed from site each evening due fear of "catastrophic" natural or unnatural occurences.

Valhalla - the reason I advised duplicate transaction files on different discs is:- should the disc containing the latest master and transaction files fail, it would be impossible to update the previous master file unless a copy of the latest transaction file is available. Good luck - Keep us posted.