computer backup methods

arrabil · Mar 23, 2010

Yeah, they don't advertise the specs on them on purpose it seems. Only the transfer rate. But the higher transfer rates also have the "higher quality" chips in them and it says that in the fine print inside the packaging.

With SanDisk, the blue cards are the standard, then they have black cards, grey cards, and then black with gold. I think they are called Ultra, Extreme, and Extreme Pro.

If you already bought something, I wouldn't give it a second thought and just use it. You might consider a second card to store offsite somewhere though.

IslandTractor · Mar 24, 2010

"higher" grade flash devices are typically faster but not necessarily more reliable. Speed matters for photography but not really for backup so I would suggest getting the size and speed that offers the most bang for the buck. Today that is probably 4 and 8 gigabyte sizes. These things now can be had on sale for ten or fifteen bucks and it might make sense to have more than a single backup of critical files. That way one can be handy and the other safe from house fire etc.

Bird · Mar 24, 2010

Like I said, I'm a computer dummy, just experimenting right now. So far, I've used the CDs and DVDs for my backups; only have them here at home, but in a little fire safe. And I don't do them actually as "backups" but instead make "copies". So this morning is my first experience with a flash drive. When I plugged it in, it came up with a number of questions/options and I went with the defaults; one of which was something called "ReadyBoost" (only available in Windows Vista) that's supposed to speed things up. Now the default showed to reserve almost 3.8 MB but for reasons unknown to me, it actually used up 3.8 GB which of course left very little of that 4 GB of storage for anything else. So I dumped that. And then I found that it's slower than burning CDs or DVDs.

I haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong yet, but I'll get there eventually.

arrabil · Mar 24, 2010

"higher" grade flash devices are typically faster but not necessarily more reliable.

How do you think the make them so much faster? Read the fine print of the blue card and an Ultra/Extreme card.

but in a little fire safe

Unless you have a media-rated fire safe they will not survive for long. Paper burns at 412 but media could be destroyed at as little as 100 degrees.

Bird · Mar 24, 2010

Unless you have a media-rated fire safe they will not survive for long. Paper burns at 412 but media could be destroyed at as little as 100 degrees.

Yeah, I know it's not the ideal way to do it, but I'm actually only making backups or copies of my data to have in the event of a hard disk dying. Don't really figure on them surviving a fire, flood, tornado, or earthquake.:laughing: Since I don't have an office to go to anymore, I used to put a spare copy in the car, and I've been known to leave one at a daugher's house, but that doesn't get updated often enough.

Now this flash drive works just fine, but I thought they were supposed to be really fast compared to copying CDs or DVDs, and maybe this is working as it's supposed to. It took nearly 3 minutes to copy 4 music albums that had been loaded into the computer from 4 CDs, and it took 9 minutes, 10 seconds to copy pictures (2,639 items (915 MB)). Does that sound right?

JCB · Mar 24, 2010

Dmace said:
No XP Pro here but I do have Service Pack 3. I must have the "special" version of Windows XP Home Edition...

Dmace,

I didnt' mean to give bad information. As far as I knew XP Home never allowed recovery, it was one of the main reasons to upgrade to Pro.

There was a workaround to get Recovery capability on XP Home, and I did it once on an old laptop...but it was a multi-step process (basically a hack) that included editing a couple registry values (whatever those are). It was a sketchy workaround at best and since that time, I never used Home Version again.

Sorry for the bad info.

Joe

2manyrocks · Mar 24, 2010

Music files are going to be slower than word processing files. I only deal with a file or two at a time so I can't speak to downloading 4 albums of content at once. File size has much to do with this.

Then there's the speed of the USB port itself, and I guess speed is also affected by processor speed and operating system.

But those USB flash drives are really convenient. They don't get scratched up and you can easily delete and reuse them.

Newegg will put them on sale every so often, too.

JCB · Mar 24, 2010

Bird,

Speeds are all over place, with many variables. 915MB almost 1GB is really a LOT of data so 9 minutes isn't horrible, but someone will write that it should be faster for some reason.

Flash drives are fine for what you're doing, but they can be erased so I'd really mix in a CD or DVD backup once in while.

I've had a hard drive fail before. People have different priorities, but now I use software and an external drive for daily backups, occasionally make copies to a different external hard drive, and I mix in a CD or DVD of important stuff at least one a year.

Whatever you want to use for backups is probably fine. Having a backup is great. Having a current backup is even better!

Joe

Bird · Mar 24, 2010

Then there's the speed of the USB port itself, and I guess speed is also affected by processor speed and operating system

Yeah, I wasn't thinking and should have mentioned that my HP desktop computer is 3.0 GB of RAM, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.80 GHz, with USB 2.0 ports front and back. So I plugged in the flash drive to one of the 2 front ports. Apparently all is well; I'd just heard so much about these flash drives that I probably had unrealistic expectations.:laughing: But I'm satisfied and will probably buy another one or two. At least I know now that 4 GB is plenty since I used less than half of it for the stuff I back up.