I bought a USB Harddrive a while ago, during a boxing week sale from Futureshop’s online store. Got it last week but I haven’t really put it through its paces. I tried a couple dummy big files to check the speed, and it’s pretty swift, but I’m just not sure if I trust it. James had one that, if I recall, gave him some difficulty (stuff vanished if I recall correctly). My brother has one that had the dire warnings that if you turn it off or otherwise unplug it before telling windows of your strong desire to do so (strong because you may try to stop the device, and windows will think better of it and decide that, no, now is not the best time, so go away) then you risk losing all your data, the drive itself, windows (oddly) and half your worldly possessions. So what about power outtages, my computer has lived through those… does it affect external drives more or something, are the manufacturers just covering their… assets?

Which reminds me, have to find room on the UPS for the plug, crazyness. Had to pull out the lamp (which was just on a surge protected plug).

Anyway, the point of this litle entry was just something I noticed in the included quick-start guide (which is listed in the box as included, as is a driver CD… what I’m sure they meant to say was that the quick-start guide was a PDF on the CD which still and confusingly just says “Driver” on it. I know, easy to get those confused, anyway, in the area dealing with the simple backup utility provided:

For important data, every month at least ‘data check’ some files after Backup Task
completed.
If possible, it’s recommended to backup your important data to other media or device
as back up copy incase of failure or accident.

I see, the very device some people would have bought to back up their internal drives to is now recommending that people backup their backup. And also, it’s recommended to backup.. as back up. incase. of failure or accident. Well, I’m sold. And I’m sure when I buy my DLT units and carts that the manual will suggest that I should back up my data on stone blocks for safe keeping, but to keep them out of that acid rain. The stone block people will then suggest getting someone with a really good memory. Not that any ’serious’ corporate or small business users should back up onto USB drives as such, but I found it funny enough to ignore that opinion.

Anyway, not sure if I should trust the thing, but I figure it might hold some of my episodes before burning them off on DVD I do download lots of… things…. things to make us go…. we look for things. (Somewhere in Hong Kong, Curtis is feeling summoned by that reference) But I should probably break it in for some general backup purposes or some such, it’s a 160GB, and my two internal 120GB ones give me 400GB of what-the-hell-am-I-hoarding capacity. The fact is, I’m not sure. I mean, I have lots of episodes of things, but every time I check the size of some of the higher folders, I dunno, it’s like all the socks I lost over my lifetime have found their way onto my platters and are filling them up. I think I might need a good format soon enough, clear away the cruft.

I remember on my P2 when I had to reformat and install XP fresh after every reboot because of… something I never quite nailed down, man, that really teaches you what you need and what you don’t. I guess I hang onto stuff just because I haven’t suffered a recent catastrophic loss of data that makes me start fresh.

Fates: That is not a proposal.