Multi Monitor Setup and Data backup

Hope someone can assist with this query.
I am in the process of upgrading my current setup, a friend is assisting in building the base unit. However he is not too sure of what the graphic card requirements would be for trading charts. I am thinking of 3 screen display with 19" monitors, where 2 screens are primarily used for Charts and broker while the third will be for messing around i.e DVD and bit of video editing.
Which video cards should I be considering? Which will offer the best performance without overkill?

Also can anyone suggest a secure and robust option of backup without using DVD media?

Thanks

SMB

anyone able to help here?

For backup I used a Raid 1 enabled Maxtor 1TB ethernet hard drive linked directly to my router.
It is excellent and access even via wireless is very fast. Can be configured either as 1TB single drive or 2 mirrored 500GB drives.
If you do not have such large storage requirement then consider Seagate USB Free Agent portable drive. Quite useful if moving regularly between locations as it will sync folders whenever a change is made, can include in that .pst mail files and any docs. The one I have is 160GB.
You could of course just back up anything essential on a memory stick which is simple enough.
I use 2 screens at home and 3 in the office one box with 2 screens and another with one, all 19" monitors. I use NVIDIA cards supplied by Dell.

Hi smbtnt,
I have just been down a similar route with a completely new system. I too have a Maxtor external storage unit. The really cool bit though is a free bit of software which automates the whole back up process:
cobian.se
Tim.

Fantastic advice guys - I will take up your suggestions.

Thanks

SMB

So add to this:

I think it is important to have a backup drive that is not raid controlled. The advantage of Mirror Raid is that if you have a hard drive failure or similar, the machine will just keep running on the remaining drive(s). However, if you were to get a virus or similar, then the virus would spread over all the drives, and if it were serious, then you would have a BIG problem as all the backups will be no good.

What I recommend, is having these raid drives, but also have a external drive and backup to that once a day. Preferably use some software to do this that allows the external drive to be an exact mirror of the internal drives so that it is bootable in the event of serious viral attack.


As for the monitors, don’t buy the GFX cards from Dell, unless you have excess cash, if you do, then buy them from me instead please :clap: Anyway onto the serious. You will need a motherboard with 2xPCI-E slots, so you can run 3 monitors. I believe there are GFX cards available with 3 DVI connectors on the back, but given most are only 2 then you will need two GFX cards, hence two slots on the main board needed. I also recommend nVidia cards, and just for running charts you will be fine with some 8600's. Go to basic 8800's if you like to be safe. However, make sure you have plenty of RAM

If someone is building this for you then they should be up and together with all this and knowing how to do it. However if you want any help/advice just squeal!

Bob

bear in mind that if you get graphics cards with silly onboard ram then this will eat into your address space and possibly decrease your accessable ram on 32bit windows Vista and XP systems. Its been a while since i looked but the last time I did the top of the range cards were offering 756mb onboard memory for cards. if you chuck two of these in then thats 1.5gb of your 4 Gb address space taken up.
this isnt a problem until you start to want to use more than 2gb of memory. but if you by 3bg of ram then you will only be able to use about 2.5 (4gb-1.5gb = 2.5). Probably not a problem unless you got some serious cash to burn but it would be a shame to pay for stuff that you cant use due to technological restrictions on the architecture.

good luck. and bear in mind that you can do a pretty good backup of most system and data vital data on a usb stick these days. at 16gb for 75 quid and lightening speeds you can forget raid 1, raid 5. although im still using it - lol.

infact i might order one myself now.

Corsair 16GB Flash Voyager USB2 Flash Drive : csr-ms16gb