back to article BOFH: Stop your tiers – when it comes to storage, less is more

"You'll never guess who I just saw in here!" the PFY blurts, entering Mission Control with a mainstream IT mag in hand. "One of the Royal Family using a tablet?" "No." "A movie star or football player with a new bendy iPhone?" "No." "A vendor-sponsored review of new technology with a shameless suckup review of their …

  1. TechnoTechno

    Ahh

    The old /dev/null backup strategy.

    Excellent stuff

    1. chivo243 Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Ahh

      @Techno Techno

      Gotta love it, unlimited storage, cheap, but a real bitch to find/restore anything. Sometimes we muse about redirecting (L)user home folders path!

      1. Cliff

        Re: Ahh

        I predict more tiers before bedtime...

      2. waldo kitty
        Devil

        Re: Ahh

        Gotta love it, unlimited storage, cheap, but a real bitch to find/restore anything. Sometimes we muse about redirecting (L)user home folders path!

        why muse? mount /dev/nul on top of their home directory and watch what happens ;)

  2. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    But... But...

    Surely the *very* last storage system should somehow involve a cattle prod.

    1. MrDamage Silver badge

      Re: But... But...

      It does. The cattle prod is used when the user demands IT retrieve said data for them.

    2. Omgwtfbbqtime

      Re: But... But...

      I disagree, that is the penultimate storage system.

      Traditionally the final storage system is a roll of carpet, a spade and some quicklime.....

  3. petur

    ANY Trackball/"advanced" mousing device

    Maybe... but I still cling to my two Logitech Trackman Marble FX - best thing they ever made

    1. EL Vark

      Re: ANY Trackball/"advanced" mousing device

      Yeah, hey, whoa, geez, Simon!

      My FX is fifteen years young and since I found the wee hidden screw under the sticker I can get it apart to give it a proper flushing every now and then. If I'd used a mouse all this time (and the decade prior, the FX replaced my Trackman Portable) there'd be a hook where my hand should be.

      My aged 60GB IBM Deathstar is still in working order, too. True, it now lives in a closet and may never again see the light of day, but was absolutely reliable until more storage was required. If you simply must whine about the IBM/Hitachi tech, you'll want to mention the noise. You'd think the PSU fan(s) would be the loudest thing in the box, but only if you've never owned a Deathstar. Squee! Clunk-Clunk-Clunk! Squee! Ah, good times.

  4. James O'Shea

    Jaz drive

    I _liked_ Jaz drives. They were much better behaved than Zip drives or (shudder) SyQuest drives.

    And, yes, I liked Logitech Trackman Marbles, though not the FX which was too expensive.

    1. Trygve Henriksen

      Re: Jaz drive

      Yeah, the JAZ drives were nice.

      Now, if you wanted to list any 'never had a gnat's chance' to succeed, I'd nominate the Iomega Clik!

      (renamed to PocketZip after the 'Click of Death' mess of the Zip drives... Exactly how is naming another product after a borked one a good idea?)

      The Sony MD-Data...

      (Look! It's slower than a floppy! Also, even if you could copy a music file onto the MD-Data disc, it wouldn't actually play it. Not that it mattered. Transferring music didn't take longer with an audio cable... )

    2. Marshalltown

      Re: Jaz drive

      Cha ... I liked the Caleb. Cheap media, large capacity, fit a regular 3.5-inch drive bay.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: On a Saturday?

      Quit whining… I'm happy to get an episode at all.

      1. Dr. Mouse

        Re: On a Saturday?

        I'm happy to get an episode at all.

        While I agree, it doesn't feel right reading it first thing on a Monday morning. Even if I had read it on Saturday, part of the appeal of BOFH is that you read it on a Friday, with that strange mix of loathing (of users, who have made your life hell all week), lethargy (because it's Friday afternoon, and there's nothing you are doing which couldn't really wait until Monday) and excitement (because you get to spend two whole days without coming into the hellhole office).

        Friday lunch time is the correct time for a new BOFH. I suspected they'd move it when they released the "Weekend edition", but it is wrong.

  6. Fatman

    The "Boss"

    <u>The Boss, however, is unlikely to learn from these mistakes, having no grounding in the good and bad of IT</u>. Like a simple-minded relative, he must be protected from harm and gently guided by the judicious use of a cattle prod.

    FTFY!

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Re: The "Boss"

      Nah, Simon's right, you can't just be "cattleprod cattleprod cattleprod". It doesn't work after a while. A carrot-and-stick approach is much more efficient: sometimes you use the cattleprod, sometimes you delete their files, sometimes you just need a brick and some quicklime. And if they ask about the carrot, make them regret the question (by the appropriate application of said carrot, perhaps after a good jolt with the cattleprod).

  7. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    SSA disks?

    What on earth does Simon have against SSA disks? I found them easy to deploy, quick for it's time, quite dense (it was the first disk subsystem I knew that used both the front and back of the drawer) and easy to maintain.

    OK, it tied you in to IBM and their disks a bit, but I did not find them too bad at the time, and there was never a quibble replacing them while under maintenance.

  8. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    How about the morass that was SCSI?

    SCSI-2

    SCSI-2, SCSI-3

    Differential

    Wide

    Fast-Wide

    Single Ended

    etc etc etc

    And a gazillion different cables and terminators (some active, some passive)

    Despite it being really slow when compared to Fast Wide SCSI and a CPU Hog, USB-1 was a breath of fresh air.

    1. TonyR

      Re: How about the morass that was SCSI?

      I quite liked the sound of the Sun4 IPI drives. They sounded like they had chickens inside, scratching around to find the bits. Maybe they did.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm goat business

    Reminds me of falling for the goatse trap on Slashdot years ago. Whilst at work.

    If you don't know what I'm on about then Google it, then read the WP article first before going further - you have been warned.

    Cheers

    Jon

  10. Johndoe888

    Friday !

    It looks like a Vulture put the calendar back 2 days :(

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Thank-you Simon!

    Been looking forward to this for some time now… and having re-read the back catalogue about 3 times over, I'm happy to read some fresh material for a change.

  12. Craig 21

    The wait had ended...

    I thought it was the end of the world, and days, weeks go by with no BOFH article.

    And yes like the others, been reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the old archives.

    Being an BOFH fan is like marriage, committed to the death.

    I mean to the death of (l)users, of course.

    This may be a risky question, but what kind of damage, could a really nice multi-tool do in the hands of a BOFH or PFY, just curious.

    But only curious in the sense, I don't know who you are, so will never provide legal witness that you or someone who has your name, actually replied to my question.

    Long live the Cattle Prods!

    May the Schwartze live with in you all!

  13. Frank N. Stein

    Simon is my hero. He says and does all of the things we wish we could say and do.

    1. hplasm

      FTFY-

      "Simon is my hero. He says and does all of the things we wish we could say and do."

      -more than just once...

  14. Ken 16 Silver badge

    accurate

    "But as data gets larger, backups get larger and take more time."

    "It doesn't and they don't," I say. "As time goes on, disk speeds increase – which is where we're backing up our data. And data isn't really increasing all that much anyway."

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