henry d Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 I want to back up all my pics, approx 2.7Gb and thought that using the above would be a good way, are there any pitfalls ? Cheers to all you tech heads Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axe Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 Cheaper to use a couple of CD's or DVD's if you have a burner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bongodriver Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 None that I can think of, just make sure the stick has the capacity for all your files, I use usb sticks alot for carrying data to and from the office, they can hold music files too, and if you have a car stereo with usb input it will play them. The only down side to usb memory sticks is that over time they lose capacity (apparently) something to do with the nature of solid state memory, in short they won't last forever but they are bloody usefull gadgets. Axe is correct, they can be expensive too, DVD would be the better option Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul65 Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 They supposedly have a finite life - only so many writes before they may be corrupted. I work in IT and we only use them for temporary storage. Best to follow Axe's recommendation of CD or DVD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunkield Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 We use them all the time at work and have done since they came out, I have never had a problems with them, we use them as bootable media rather than having to find usb floppies etc. If you don't have a DVD writer (guessing you don't as you would be using that) personally I would use a key over multiple CD's just for convenience, or look at USB external hard drive, they are as cheap as chips these days. I bought a second HDD and fitted that in my 'main' PC at home as I too became paranoid about loosing all my photo's etc, so I just ghost it all over once a week or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry d Posted September 28, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 USB external hard drive seems to be the way to go, as I can then scan and download all the old family pics too, cheers guys ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piebob Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 ...just remember to be disciplined and backup regularly. The USB drive will be your backup - not your main file store. Sorry if this is a "suck-eggs" comment... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardy Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 A handy bit of software to use with it is Second Copy. There is a 30 day trial version for free so you can set it up & it will continue working after that expires you just cant change any of the settings. Its backup software that will copy files to, say, your external hard drive so the inital copy can take some time. After that it just looks for changes & copies them rather so its lots quicker. You can set it to run automatically too. I use it at home for exactly this purpose (except I have about 100gb of photos!) and have used it in the office too when we've been replacing servers to minimise down time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J@mes Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 Removing them when data is still being read off them can corrupt them, and my missus dropped hers once and it never worked after that either! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul65 Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 ...just remember to be disciplined and backup regularly. The USB drive will be your backup - not your main file store. Sorry if this is a "suck-eggs" comment... Quite right. I've got an AppleTV that I use mainly for music and ripped all my CDs onto lossless format on a hard drive - 200Gb worth. It took weeks to do and I wouldn't want to do it again so I back it up to an external USB drive whenever I add CDs. I went with an external backup as a power supply fault once shagged every internal component in my PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markio Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 If you have Nero this has a backup feature so you can set regular times to automatically backup files to a given device (Maybe in your case a USB HDD). Setting incremental backups only copies over any information that has changed or been added to specified folders. It's a nice little feature if you already have Nero. And as above, i wouldn't recommend USB pens for back up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Country_est Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 For the photos I would go with the DVD option, also scan your house & insurance and any other "valuable" docs on it and store away from your house as well as having copies at home. Great to have some of these things out side of your house, you probabley can think of a few reasons why in your job HD. Cheers PS have Several of the USB sticks cos I keep leaving them in servers or somebody elses PC, but have mine password protected. Trev Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pin Posted September 28, 2007 Report Share Posted September 28, 2007 Have a look at the online backup providers, upload it and they keep it for you. Much more resilient than anything most of us could afford For example http://www.sosonlinebackup.com/ They charge about a £1.50/month for 2GB of storage. Even cleverer than that, they do bit-level backups. The first one takes time (as with any full backup) but from then on only what changes is transmitted to them. For example you use it to backup your PC, then you run windows update. Instead of copying over all the files that changed, it copies only the differences in the actual files themselves meaning less to transfer and it works faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devilishdave Posted September 29, 2007 Report Share Posted September 29, 2007 We use memory sticks all the time in Iraq because they dont get scratched with dust and sand like discs do. I have even put one through the wash and once dried out it still worked. Not to be recomended though!! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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