Dell PowerEdge 4200 Series User Manual

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Contents

Dell PowerEdge 4200 Series User Manual Manual pdf 95 page image

Maintaining the System C-1Appendix CMaintaining the SystemProper use of preventive maintenance procedures cankeep your system in top operating condition and minimizethe need for costly, time-consuming service procedures.This appendix contains maintenance procedures that youshould perform regularly.Data PreservationEveryone inadvertently deletes files at one time oranother. Also, hard-disk drives can fail after extendeduse, so it is not a question of whether you will eventuallylose data, but when. To avoid such loss of data, youshould regularly make backup copies of all hard-diskdrive files. Frequent, regular backups are a must for any-one using a hard-disk drive.Scheduling BackupsThe frequency with which backups should be madedepends on the amount of storage space on a hard-diskdrive and the volatility of the data contained on the drive.Heavily used systems require more frequent backupsthan systems in which files are seldom changed.Dell recommends that you back up the hard-disk drive atleast once a week, with a daily backup of those filesknown to have been changed. Following these guidelinesensures the loss of no more than a day’s work in the eventof a hard-disk drive failure or if you inadvertently deleteone or more important files.As further insurance against data losses, you should keepduplicate copies of the weekly and monthly backups at anoff-site location. Doing this ensures that you lose nomore than a week’s work, even if one of the on-site back-ups becomes corrupted.Backup DevicesTape drives are fast, convenient, and affordable devicesthat can back up data at rates of up to 1.6 megabytes persecond (MB/sec) (sustained, with data compression) andcan often run unattended. Dell offers tape drives withstorage capacities in the range of 200 MB to 8 gigabytes(GB) per tape cartridge and recommends these drives andtheir associated backup software for use as systembackup devices.As a last resort, you can back up a hard-disk drive’s con-tents on diskettes, a method that is both time-consumingand prone to human error. Also, backing up a full120-MB hard-disk drive requires approximately 83 dis-kettes (when using 1.44-MB diskettes), 100 diskettes(when using 1.2-MB diskettes), or 42 diskettes (whenusing 2.88-MB diskettes). Therefore, if it is absolutelynecessary to use diskettes as backup devices, anyunwanted hard-disk drive files should be deleted before abackup procedure is started.Recovering DataSome hard-disk drive failures are recoverable. In thesecases you may be able to recover all lost data if theproper utility software is available. Even losses such asaccidentally deleted files or accidental reformatting of ahard-disk drive can be reversed with these utilities.If the computer system is running MS-DOS, many appar-ent data loss problems are due to corruption or erasure ofthe hard-disk drive’s master boot record (MBR),MS-DOS boot sector, or file allocation table (FAT). Thatis, accidental deletion of files or accidental reformattingof the hard-disk drive alters the MS-DOS boot sector, theFAT, and the root directory.However, such accidents do not actually erase the con-tents of the hard-disk drive files until new data is written