1.5TB Hard Drive – $69 This Wednesday?
Happy Memorial Day everybody! Hopefully your planning an afternoon picnic with family and friends; I know I am. Hopefully we won’t get rained out. I checked my email this morning and discovered that Newegg.com is offering some pretty interesting hard drive deals this week. (more…)
Save Your Valuable Data and Backup Your Stuff!
I’ve been repairing computers for the past 17 years. As the years have flown by and technology has evolved I’ve heard one statement over and over: “Backup you data.” From the old 486 machines, through the Pentium period, and on today today’s multicore systems I’ve heard that same “backup your data” statement so often that it’s become a mantra. The thinking is that you should back up your stuff because if you some reason you loose it you can retrieve the data from the backup. If you only have one copy of your stuff you risk loosing it. Don’t risk that. Back up your stuff. (more…)
The Sound of Storage
The ipod is basically a fancy hard drive, so why not use the storage space it offers?
Clickfree’s transformer allows you to do just that. It helps you store documents, video, photos, anything on the excess storage space your ipod has to offer. The transformer is connected to a USB. Plug that into your computer and plug the other end of the cord to your ipod (as if you were charging your ipod normally) and begin storing. The Transformer claims it will never overwrite music or other files already on your device. Add the ability to pull music and playlists from any ipod back onto your computer and everything sounds pretty cool.
Simple Storage
With applications like Apple’s Time Machine automatic and personalized computer back up is the new trend in safe storage. But what about everyone who bought external hard drives before the new boom? Shouldn’t they be rewarded for their foresight? For their understanding that backing up your files, especially before computers were as reliable as they are now, was a necessity and not just a commodity?
Well, Clickfree has decided to reward those intelligent few with the Transformer Cable. All you have to do is plug the transformer cable into the USB slot on your computer, plug the USB hard drive into the cable, and your files will automatically back up. How simple! The only question is, with hard drive prices dropping every day, how do you feel about the $59 price tag?
Small and Mighty
This is an ode to the USB flash drive. They’ve been around for awhile but it seems (though they are popular) not as many people have latched on to them as I would have expected. In my opinion anyone with a computer should also own a USB flash drive.
For those unsure of exactly what a USB flash drive is good for, in short, they are good for storage. You basically plug the thing into the USB port on your computer and, as if you inserted a blank disk, you can then drag files onto the drive.
Storage is important because computers, despite their increased reliability over time, still crash. The smartest thing you can do is back up your files by saving them not only on your computers hard drive but in another place as well. Besides the USB there are also the options of an external hard drive or a disk.
I find that I would rather save my blank CD’s and DVD’s for music and class projects (that I must often hand in on a disk) and an external hard drive is just not in my personal price range at the moment (though depending on storage capacity flash drives and hard drives can have similar costs). Beyond that a USB drive is just much more travel friendly for my convenience, an external hard drive is much more difficult to drag back and forth from school.
USB’s come in a number of sizes over a very broad price range, from a few hundred megabytes to a lot of gigabytes. Depending on how much information you feel you need to backup (or how much cash you have handy) that determines how much storage space you are going to purchase. I find it is only necessary to backup my work, writing files and the like, so I have yet to reach out of the two gigabyte range.
It’s a simple relatively well priced solution to the possibility of a computer induced mental break down. Even with the newest and most reliable computer on your desk often it’s better to be safe than sorry.
