Small Business Solution

Hi:

I work with a computer with Win 98 / 64 MB of RAM / 12.5 G hard drive
space - with 1.7 G free.

I've had problems with it freezing up when I've been trying to use the
Find File feature and also had it give errors regarding Explorer.

It is networked to 4-5 computers and is connected via a DSL connection
to the Internet.

I've since then run Spybot on it and have deleted .tmp files on it.

It doesn't give the errors regarding the Explorer yet it still freezes
during the Find File feature once in a while.

I'm wondering what would be a good solution for this computer:

a) Buy a computer with better resources.


b) Buy another hard drive.

This is one problem. This is part of a bigger problem as these
computers are for a small business...there needs to be a way of
having them backed up. A central server, backed up on CD-Rs, tape,
zip drive??? If on a central back-up server what kind of specs should
it have, RAM, hard-drive space, etc. Enough to fit all the documents
and non-system files from the other computers on to. What would be
a recommended opperating system, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP and
why?

Would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,

smc

netsurfer802 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com wrote:

I work with a computer with Win 98 / 64 MB of RAM / 12.5 G hard drive
space - with 1.7 G free.

I've had problems with it freezing up when I've been trying to use the
Find File feature and also had it give errors regarding Explorer.
[...]
I'm wondering what would be a good solution for this computer:
a) Buy a computer with better resources.
b) Buy another hard drive.

c) None of the above, at least at first. If it's doing what you need
(other than the freezing), there's no need for something with more
resources, and there's also no point in getting another hard drive
unless you know this one is bad.

The problem sounds like something's corrupted somewhere. If you've got
the "fast find" feature enabled (I'm not even sure if that was around in
Win98!), that makes indexes of the files on the drive, and the index
could be corrupted. Or it could be something in the filesystem
corrupted, or ... any number of things, really.

I presume you've already run scandisk on the drive, and defragmented
it. If not, try that, and see if it helps; those should take care of
any filesystem corruption while they're running.

So, if that hasn't worked, I'd suggest making a backup of everything
important on it, and reformatting the drive and reinstalling
everything. Chances are that that will fix the problem, but if not,
then start looking for a hardware problem.

This is one problem. This is part of a bigger problem as these
computers are for a small business...there needs to be a way of
having them backed up. A central server, backed up on CD-Rs, tape,
zip drive??? If on a central back-up server what kind of specs should
it have, RAM, hard-drive space, etc. Enough to fit all the documents
and non-system files from the other computers on to. What would be
a recommended opperating system, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP and
why?

In my experience -- which, I should note, is personal rather than
business -- you really don't need that much hardware for a backup
server, other than disk space. And the operating system really doesn't
matter that much either, so long as it's patched and secure. Win2k
Server is nice because it lets you "mirror" disk partitions, so you
don't lose data if a drive fails -- you could do that with a RAID card,
but it's easier to just do it in software. And, since the data on the
backup server is already replicated on the rest of the computers, you
may not need the disk-mirroring anyway.

As for CPU and memory: my experience has been that my 200MHz Pentium Pro
is a little bit slow at copying files over a high-speed ethernet line,
but only a little bit. Anything faster than that and the limit is the
connection rather than the computer. And 256MB should be plenty for the
operating system if it's Win2k, or 512MB for XP -- you're not going to
be running large applications on it.

For hard-drive space: you want enough to store everything you need to
backup (and everything you could conceivably want too -- it's really a
pain if you run out of space!) on it. Twice that, if you're doing disk
mirroring.

As for tape vs. CD-Rs vs. DVD-Rs for making the permanent backups: I
don't have much experience with this. CDs are pretty annoying if you
have more than a few GB of data to back up, because you have to use so
many of them (though there are commercial backup programs that handle
that for you; might be well worth investigating.)

- Brooks


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