I finally gave up agitating for a backup facility at the university I work at (Never going to happen. The proactivity required seems to conflict with the culture on a basic level) and belatedly bought myself a Toshiba external USB 500G hard disk.
Works OK but the cable is a design flaw.
Its stiff, so its awkward to stow, and since accessible USB ports on desktop PC’s tend to be close to the edge of the desk, the cable has a tendancy to straighten and chuck the running hard disk onto the floor. This interrupts the backup and can’t be good for the disk.
I saw one with a wrap-around ribbon cable (“Buffalo” brand?) that with hindsight I should have bought, but went for the Tosh 'cos I’ve had good experience with Tosh laptops as sniffers in a previous job. Too late now.
Anyway, I thought I’d buy or make a soft foam/fluffy cover for the external drive to reduce the chance of damage. It doesn’t seem to get very warm in “naked” operation, so I assume the extra thermal insulation shouldn’t be a problem?
Sure, if it is not getting warm at all, thermal insulation should be OK. If in doubt, you can use it for a while and take it out to see if it is OK. OK should be way below the point where it is feeling hot, or even too hot to touch (5x°C for most people).
Generally the USB cables are interchangeable, so if you find any cable that you like better, just use it. Longer (can be up to 5m) cables should be available, as well as more flexible. Just make sure the cable has the USB-IF “Certified High Speed USB” logo somewhere on it or on the packaging:
The “high speed” is the point here, “USB2.0” or whatever else doesn’t mean much if “high speed” is not mentioned.
Still, even with shock reducing insulation, I would not trust a HDD much that has fallen during operation… especially for backup. If it is about a desktop PC, how about fixing the drive somewhere inside or outside the desktop PC case?
Do you really need 500GB? Unless you keep your entire porn collection on your university machine, one of the new 32GB SD cards ought to do the job (plus an SD-card USB stick, if you PC doesn’t have a slot for it). Or perhaps use one of the online storage services, if your university has advanced into the net-connected age.
Anyway, fluffy cover sounds like a good plan to me. Pink with Hello Kitty branding?
[quote=“finley”]Do you really need 500GB? Unless you keep your entire porn collection on your university machine, one of the new 32GB SD cards ought to do the job (plus an SD-card USB stick, if you PC doesn’t have a slot for it). Or perhaps use one of the online storage services, if your university has advanced into the net-connected age.
Anyway, fluffy cover sounds like a good plan to me. Pink with Hello Kitty branding?[/quote]
Well, actually I was unsure whether to get a TB. Sooner or later I’ll probably wish I had.
Space is to some extent a substitute for organisation.
I’ve got about 100G on three PC’s but will be consolidating to one. A lot of the data is redundant or discardable, but it’d take too long to sort through and its quicker just to back up the lot for now. If I start running a proper backup cycle with incrementals the 500G could get to be a limitation. Maybe I could run the incrementals onto SD, though managing that, and the write-limit, might be problems. I don’t know if one gets warning when the write-life is exceeded, or just looses data.
I have a salvaged PC running ubuntu that I was thinking of using as a “backup server”, but setting up software for that is likely to be more hassle than I have time for right now, so I’ll proably use the Windows backup utility for now.
Any backup management software recommendations? (preferably free)
I’ve put the HD in a DVD case, (cut for the cable), with bubble wrap on the inside for now, but I’ll look at/for a softer and fluffier, (pinker and kittier optional) solution later.
There are a few duplicate-file finders out there which I’m evaluating myself (being similarly disorganised) … the one I’m trying now is complete crap, I’ll let you know what else I find!
To overcome physical interference between a USB flash memory stick and the Tosh external hard drive cable, tried running them via a 4-port USB hub but the HD wouldn’t, perhaps because it couldn’t pull enough power from the hub (the hub has what looks like a separate"transformer" input plug which tends to support this interpretation, though there’s no indication of what voltage it needs).
The Tosh says it supports USB 3.0, but since I dont have anything else that does, its rather a notional advantage at the moment.
I didn’t want to shell out $30 or whatever they cost for a cover for my Kindle to prevent it from getting scratched. So, I use an old striped sock for a cover. With toes. Maybe I get some funny looks, but I don’t care. Saved myself 30 bucks.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Anything you make yourself is always very cool.
I didn’t want to shell out $30 or whatever they cost for a cover for my Kindle to prevent it from getting scratched. So, I use an old striped sock for a cover. With toes. Maybe I get some funny looks, but I don’t care. Saved myself 30 bucks.[/quote]
You can get a perfectly good, thin, soft-padded cover at Daiso or the like for ~39NT… They are sized for various standard paper sizes, but there are enough of them that you can get one thats a good fit. I use one for my iPad 2 that’s a perfect fit.
edlitgow, you can probably do the same for your hard drive.
For your work machine, Dropbox might be great for you. No USB stick, just throw stuff in a folder and it shows up everywhere: your PC, your phone, your tablet, etc. Then if you need a lot of storage, you can just back it up at home or onto some other service such as a bigger Dropbox or even Amazon S3.
[quote=“mabagal”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Anything you make yourself is always very cool.
I didn’t want to shell out $30 or whatever they cost for a cover for my Kindle to prevent it from getting scratched. So, I use an old striped sock for a cover. With toes. Maybe I get some funny looks, but I don’t care. Saved myself 30 bucks.[/quote]
You can get a perfectly good, thin, soft-padded cover at Daiso or the like for ~39NT… They are sized for various standard paper sizes, but there are enough of them that you can get one thats a good fit. I use one for my iPad 2 that’s a perfect fit.
edlitgow, you can probably do the same for your hard drive.
For your work machine, Dropbox might be great for you. No USB stick, just throw stuff in a folder and it shows up everywhere: your PC, your phone, your tablet, etc. Then if you need a lot of storage, you can just back it up at home or onto some other service such as a bigger Dropbox or even Amazon S3.[/quote]
Oh, by the way. If anyone decides to get Dropbox, use this link dropbox.com/referrals/NTI5N … s_fb_post9
and you will get an extra 250 MB (It’s all free) and I will too. A new free account gets 2 GB.
Thanks for the suggestions all. Like the sock idea (with an integrated USB hub one could run individual cables out of, or between, the toes) but its not really fluffy enough.
I thought Microsoft Skydrive, with 25G, would be useful for backup, but AFAICT from a quick look you have to upload files individually. (?!) If I have to do that I might just as well email them to myself, which I do with critical current work sometimes.
Free online storage has a nasty habit of “suddenly” going offline when the provider realises they aren’t making money, but I will look into this Dropbox of which you speak.
I should have considered the backup software aspect when I was shopping for the external drive. Some came bundled with disk-mirroring and other utilities, but there doesn’t seem to be anything with the Tosh.
They are sized for various standard paper sizes, but there are enough of them that you can get one thats a good fit. I use one for my iPad 2 that’s a perfect fit.