I am looking for something to backup the information I store on my computor. I don’t know much about that sort of thing but I hear talk about an external harddrive and I have heard of a flashdive as well.
I don’t store many pictures etc. so I likely don’t need a lot of capacity.
Is a flashdrive something I can leave on the computor and it backs up on the go? Why would I need the one over the other?
Do these devices store programs as well as documents?
Thanks in advance.
Hi Bert…
Basically, it comes down to how much you wish to store. You can get some fairly large flash drives these days and you’d be hard pressed to fill the largest of them with just text and word files. You can leave them plugged in and most backup programs should let you backup to them automatically. The only problem I’ve ever had with flash drives is that, because of their size, they’re very easy to lose.
Because the smaller ones can be found for a bargain (1 GB should run you less than $20 American)…you could buy a small one and try it out. If you find the space severly cramping, you could then upgrade to an external hard drive. Optimally, for backup purposes, you should find an external hard drive that’s close to the size of your internal one. However, you can go for less depending on how much you wish to backup. They are not as expensive as they used to be (per GB). In terms of price per GB, the flash drives will always be more because of the technology involved.
I don’t know what you’re current system handles, but personally, I use a 120 GB internal hard drive as my main drive and recently purchased a 320 GB internal hard drive for backing up. The internal drives will usually be cheaper and faster, though you can’t take them anywhere.
Best,
Chris
Thanks Chris.
I bought my girlfriend a 250 GB portable hard drive for about $80, and they’re the easiest and most useful things in the world. You just connect them with a USB cord and you’re ready to transfer files. A flash drive won’t have the capacity for serious/large backups.
Here’s what I bought:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148233
Flash memory is like a dream come true–admittedly it comes just as regular hard drives have achieved a revolution in capacity with vertical recording, so they’re not going to be replaced immediately.
For me, in using either of them as a secure backup, I can’t escape the feeling that the longevity of flash memory is an unanswered question and that if a hard drive crashes, it may still be possible to recover most of your data from it. I doubt if that will ever be possible with flash.
For backups, use an external drive. Flash drives are best for carting a few documents around and industrial espionage. For extra paranoia, keep the external drive in a different end of the house when not being backed up to.
I have an encrypted file with some of my financial data (accounts and contact numbers, etc.) on my computer. I do keep a copy of that on a flash drive, in case of total disaster.
Do these devices store programs as well as documents?
To modern computers programs are just a special kind of document. However, depending on the software the backup copy could only be used if you copied it back over a damaged original. The installer of a big application sprays files all over your computer’s filesystem, all of which need to be in place for the program to run.
Often external hard drives will come with backup software on them ready to use. If you only want to make sure certain things don’t get lost, manually copying onto an external drive may be fine.
Most modern backup software — including most of the freebies manufacturers might give you — makes a distinction between a full and an incremental backup. The full backup is, as the name implies, everything. The incremental only backs up files that have changed since the previous full or incremental, so it runs faster. My own low-key backup regime is to do a full backup once a quarter, and then incrementals once a week for the next three months, lather, rinse, repeat. Since I keep at least two previous quarters around I need an external drive several times larger than the amount of space I intend to back up.