Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/05/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Robert, I've got an external WD 80GB drive that I now use for weekly backups and image storage. I've been doing exactly what you suggest. Every Sat. morning I copy two groups of files that need updating as backups. From time to time, I purge older backups to save disc space. Since I use a PC, I use Windows commands for the file copy routine. I assume that Mac has something similar. When I am not using the drive, it is powered down and the USB cable is disconnected. I spend about 10 minutes every Sat. at this. It is certainly fast enough for me. I learned the hard way about the problems of using dedicated backup software. The commands that I used for this in Windows 98SE were no longer supported when I moved up to Win XP. The file copy commands will always be there. Jim Nichols Tullahoma, TN USA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert D. Baron" <rbaron@concentric.net> To: <lug@leica-users.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 6:55 PM Subject: [Leica] Question Re Backing Up to External Hard Drives > My local Best Buy store is selling Western Digital 500 GB MyBook External > USB 2.0/eSata Hard Drives (Model WDG1SU5000N) for $140. I think that is > cheap enough to buy a couple and use them as back ups for my image files. > > I'm not talking about using Retrospect back up software or doing anything > fancy, I'm talking about just copying my image files from my computer's > hard drive over to an external hard drive as a form of back up. > > Is there a reason this is not a good idea? > > Should I instead (or in addition?) be burning the image files to Gold DVDs > and storing them there? > > Even with sales tax these Western Digital drives work out to about 30? per > GB which seems pretty cheap to me. > > I know that USB 2.0 is not the fastest transfer mechanism on the block but > for what I have in mind I *think* it would be acceptable. > > Thanks for any thoughts. > > --Bob > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >