Use an External Hard Drive to protect your critical financial and Photo Files!
I finally just couldn't put it off any longer.
I did some surfing to figure out what I wanted. There's no need to tell you that the sight of me in one of those long legged "surfer" swimming suits has been know to scare small children and delicate women!
So, in the interest of good neighboring, and public decency, I cut my "surfing" a little short, and just drove in to good Ol' Best Buy to look for what I thought I knew what I was going to get.
I'd decided on an external hard drive when it was made known to me that the CD's I had been storing all my pictures on are, in fact, Not permanent. Turns out they only have a shelf life of maybe 5 years, I'm told. Then depending on the storage conditions, they can start to degrade. Sometimes, even sooner.
I'd also considered just getting a second computer. Mike, my good friend up in Wyoming, just shook his head and said "No, Brian, you don't need to spend that much money. Get one of these (as he tapped the external hard drive sitting on his desk). A lot simpler, easier, and cheaper."
So, that's the way I went. Dang it! I hate it when he has to be right all the dad burned time!
Well, like I said, I thought I had a drive picked out. Only, when I went in to Best Buy I found out that the one I'd picked was indeed, not, a one touch, push button deal, and even needed additional software to make it work. Shucks!
But, have no fear, Best Buy was there! (this time anyway) The kid there showed me to a system, he swore, he himself was using. It had even more storage capability by nearly 100 of those gigabyte thing-a-ma-jigs, has a single button to make the whole deal work, and to make it all even sweeter, it was about the same price.
At only 6.78" X 2.23" X 5.63 it met my needs to be compact as well.
****The ext. hard drive is the little box on the left****
**Yeah, I use a wireless mouse too. Can't stand the mouse pad**
The unit is the 320GB, My Book, external hard drive unit, built by a company called Western Digital. Cost me something like $223.00 counting Uncle Sams cut.
Not cheap I guess, but a whole lot cheaper than a new Toshiba laptop. And, much better than trying to recreate a lot of lostinformation as well as irreplaceable digital photographs.
Took it home. Got all the wires hooked up and badda boom, badda bing Goin' RV Boondocking was backed up. Whew! Was a simple deal to get it all loaded. It comes with all software pre-loaded. Even has some special google "bonus" software included.
When it first fires up it takes you pretty quick through the loading process and then you can tell it to do the backup.
Done! One less thing to worry about.
I probably dodged a bullet on that one. They way things are, with viruses, equipment failure and spilled coffee, it was onlya matter of time before something really bad happened. Truth is, I waited way to long to do this. I hear all the time where folks had catastrophic computer crashes and lost huge amounts of work. All because they, like me, had not set things up to back up their work.
What's cheaper, a couple hundred up front, for an external hard drive, or redoing maybe a couple hundred hours of lost work?
Now, as long as the "something really bad" doesn't cover enough area to wipe out the new "My Book" external hard drive too, I'll be just fine!
For folks who really store a lot of pictures, I figure you could have one or a couple. As you fill one up, just hook up another and your files are long term secured, and quickly available. I suppose if you're a really windy "writer" ........... you could store all your ruminations pretty compactly as well.
Would take a heck of a lot of "wind" to fill up 320GB!
I really like how this external hard drive will be able to keep those picture files in such a compact way. Right now all my pics for the last few years are on CD's, in large binders. (I put them there when they really started loading up the hard drive on the computer).
A real pain to sort through and then reload onto the laptop. The sheer volume of Binders was not going to work in the Fifth Wheel either. Not going down the road full-time and stacking up new pictures in a hurry!
Now, all I have to do is load them back, one more time, backup that work, and then use the CD's for frisbees!
Return from External Hard Drive to Goin' RV Boondocking
