Computer Design, Fault Tolerance and Prevention - Research Paper Example

?Computer Design Computer Design Computer systems crash every now and then and each time they crash they cause huge losses to the owners. Computer systems are a need today; they are used in various settings for different means. These systems are used not only by individuals, these system have become a part of organizations. Organizations store huge amount of information on these systems. If these systems crash, all the important information that organizations might have stored on these systems might be lost. Thus, it is advised by computer experts to keep a backup of the information and resources that are stored on computer systems. This paper will focus upon the various storage devices that can be used by computer users to keep a backup of their information and resources, and the differences between redundant and backup data storage and how systems fail and how can they be protected. Backup Media Various forms of backup media available to users include: optical storage methods such as writeable and re-writable CDs and DVDs, external and internal hard disks that can be mounted on the systems and flash memory systems such as pen drives, USB drives and memory cards. Information stored on optical drives can last for very long period of time if these drives are kept safely, secondly these drives are even available in write once only form. This is an advantage because the data that is stored on these drives cannot be replaced or over-written. These drives even come in re-writable form; this means that same drive can be used do over write if old information is no longer needed. These drives are easy to move from one pc to another, these drives can be used in several systems but one system can use it at a time. Another downside of optical drives is that the time taken by these drives to write data and store information on them is considerably high if compared to the time taken by flash drives and other forms of memory drives. Another form of backup media that can come in handy for computer users is installing a second hard drive internally or externally. The advantages of having a second hard disk are enormous. Firstly, the second hard disk can act as a backup for files stored on your system; this will come in handy if the files from the first hard disk are deleted. Another advantage of using an extra hard disk is that the process of backing up files in a second hard disk is faster as compared to backing up these files in an optical drive or a USB flash memory drive. Having a second hard disk is even of advantage as the files and the resources that have been downloaded over time on the computer system can be safe and the users d not have to take the pain of downloading and saving these resources again. All the operations conducted in a computer system take place on the first hard disk or the primary hard disk, due to this continuous usage, the hard disk becomes old and starts wearing out and ultimately the user has to replace it. When two hard disks are involved in the process of running a computer system, the burden of running the computer system is shared and both the hard disks gain higher functional life time. Disadvantages associated with installing a second hard disk are few in number. Firstly, hard disks have to be dealt with extra care, misuse may easily damage or corrupt the hard disk and data loss may occur, secondly, if the drive is installed inside the system, moving the drive to another system might become difficult and during the transfer, the chances of damage are quite high. One of the best backup media designed to-date is USB flash memory drives/sticks. The advantages of using this media are: they are very small in size and can hold huge amount o information, they are easy to move and do not contain parts that might get corrupted if they are mishandled. These drives are even better than optical drives as they cannot be destroyed due to scratches and dust. Installing them is much easier than installing hard disks as they do not need drivers; he data transfer rate of USB is higher than the data transfer rate of Optical drives. The downside of using this memory device is that the device is so small in size that it can be easily misplaced or forgotten which might cause huge damage if the information stored on it is of high secrecy. Secondly, USB drives do not have huge memory space as compared to hard disks. RAID When an individual refers to redundancy while talking about storage of data, they tend to talk about RAID. People refer to RAID as referring to backup of data f a computer system; this is not true at all. Backup storage and RAID or redundancy are two different terminologies and are quite different in nature but both come in handy for data protection. RAID refers to Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drive, this means that RAID is a collection of different amounts of drive that consists of same specifications and is entirely based on the way users configure them to replicate data or divide data that is saved by the user on them. A user can setup RAID in different patterns, the m0ost commonly way of setting up RAID are RAID 0, 1 and 5. RAID 0 is the simplest form of configurations of RAID; it is even recognized as Striping as in this configuration two hard disk drives that have similar space are connected to a computer system and information that is stored by the user is divided between these two drives. This helps in increasing the life of the hard disk as two drives are used at the same time and burden is shared. The downside of using this configuration is that, all the data on the drives will be lost of both the drives are corrupted. Another RAID configuration is recognized as mirroring, it is even called RAID 1, in this configuration, two drives are used at the same time and the data stored on one of the drive is mirrored or copied on the other drive (Shapiro, 2008) . This is very helpful as if one of the drives fails or stops working; the second drive holds the same information and data is saved. On the other hand, backups are a saved copy of the original documents. These copies are created by users and are conducted over a specific period of time, depending on the amount of data being stored. Fault Tolerance and Prevention There are various reasons due to which RAM gets corrupted or fails to operate properly. One of the main reasons is changes in power such as increase in power or decrease in power or power fluctuations. Certain times the components of a RAM become very heated up due to which they experience damage. Parity Checking is one of the best methods of detecting errors experienced by RAM, this method does not provide solutions or help in identifying solutions but can aid in identifying issues faced by RAM. On the other hand, ECC or Error Checking and Correction can be quite useful in not only detecting faults in the RAM, it even solves and corrects the issue itself. One way to cope with power shortages is using a UPS, but a UPS is not a permanent solution, it cannot help the system continue operating at all times, in this scenario, using two power supplies is the best option. References Shapiro, J. R. (2008). Windows server 2008 bible. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley. Read More