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Backing up...
Dec. 13th, 2005 06:06 pmExternal USB drives are great for moving files around, backing up your important files, and storing all those MP3s that won't fit on your main drive.
But please, please, please don't use them as the only place to keep your most important documents.
A friend (well, actually the father of a friend) called me with a problem the other day. Whenever he tried to access his USB drive, it told him it wasn't formatted and asked him would he like to format it now? Fortunately he at least was savvy enough to answer no to the latter question.
When I last looked at his PC, he was working off the computer's hard disk and backing up his data to the external one daily. Unfortunately, the main drive was running out of space, so he developed the bad habit of storing files directly on the external one. This, of course, meant there was only one copy.
After lots of fiddling with USB and IDE cables, I resorted to a program that has got me out of a couple of sticky spots in the past: "PC Inspector File Recovery". This seems to have found all the files on drive, and is now writing them to a brand new drive, and a random sample that I've tested seem to be fine.
Of course, if the only place your files exist is on your hard drive, you're no better off. The hard disk is in my opinion one of the greatest inventions on the twentieth century, but it is a mechanical device, and will eventually fail. In this case we were lucky, but you might not be.
Make sure you backup your data.
But please, please, please don't use them as the only place to keep your most important documents.
A friend (well, actually the father of a friend) called me with a problem the other day. Whenever he tried to access his USB drive, it told him it wasn't formatted and asked him would he like to format it now? Fortunately he at least was savvy enough to answer no to the latter question.
When I last looked at his PC, he was working off the computer's hard disk and backing up his data to the external one daily. Unfortunately, the main drive was running out of space, so he developed the bad habit of storing files directly on the external one. This, of course, meant there was only one copy.
After lots of fiddling with USB and IDE cables, I resorted to a program that has got me out of a couple of sticky spots in the past: "PC Inspector File Recovery". This seems to have found all the files on drive, and is now writing them to a brand new drive, and a random sample that I've tested seem to be fine.
Of course, if the only place your files exist is on your hard drive, you're no better off. The hard disk is in my opinion one of the greatest inventions on the twentieth century, but it is a mechanical device, and will eventually fail. In this case we were lucky, but you might not be.
Make sure you backup your data.
