[Ham-Computers] Question

[Jim Hill]

Here's my approach:
I have about 4 gigs of emails, most from various ham-radio 
reflectors.  I use two 8 GB usb flash drives to back these files up, 
alternating between the two drives.  If the hard drive fails, I have 
two separate storage devices to fall back on.  I had a failure of 
another flash drive, possibly caused my much sorting, comparing, etc. 
of a large list of word documents, so I avoid doing much to these 
drives other than saving and deleting. When it's time to back up, I 
delete what's currently on the flash drive and then save the current 
data from the hard drive.  I check a few emails, and then immediately 
put the flash drive in a drawer.  They are easy to lose (and I have 
an excellent track record for losing things), but I have white paper 
tags attached to them with short lengths of string, which makes them 
much easier to find.  I'm currently using Kingston DataTraveler DT1-8 
drives, which resemble the drive seen in 
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-8GB-DataTraveler-flash-drive/dp/B0012X5766/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1226187141&sr=8-1#moreAboutThisProduct

I always check customer reviews, and this one has a good review for 
modern equipment where cost seems to be the primary goal.  Main major 
complaints were failures and slow operation.  Operational speed 
doesn't matter here, I go eat breakfast while the computer is backing up.

In your case, I'd suggest three flash drives - maybe purchased from 
different vendors.

I use external drives for other backups, and I'm currently going to 
two levels of external drives, as reviews of recent hard drives have 
really dropped to maybe 20 to 30% failures.   My luck has been much 
better; I have never had  a hard drive failure other than dropping my 
notebook, which landed on the hard drive drawer.

Good Luck

Jim






At 05:30 PM 11/7/2008, you wrote:
>G'Day All
>I have a back up storage problem
>Background
>years ago i stored stuff on the same system disk as the os, well i 
>had a hard drive crash lost it all
>them i put in a second Hard drive and back up everything on it, no 
>os just data storage
>it crashed after a few years
>so then i bought a usb external hard drive
>DISASTER i dropped it and cannot access it
>data recovery services might be able to help i don't know
>
>IS there any way to safe store data that i wont lose it other than a 
>hard copy of everything
>
>
>
>Semper Vigilis
>http://myweb.cableone.net/wxfreqrs/ Real Time Weather Observations
>http://www.jcmsara.org Ham Radio
>Don
>______________________________________________________________
>Ham-Computers mailing list
>Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ham-computers
>Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html
>Post: mailto:Ham-Computers at mailman.qth.net