We Wish You a Merry Backup: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-21-07

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I'd like to wish you a very merry backup. As I did last year at about this time, I want to urge you to give your friends, family, co-workers, employees, clients (check all that apply), and most of all yourself the gift of backups.

Free Online Backup

If you're strapped for cash, try sitting down with your loved ones and setting up accounts for them on Mozy. Of course, the ones who just got new digital video cameras for Christmas are going to need more than the 2GB of storage that comes with a free account, but for many people, it's plenty. And it has the advantage that once you've set it up, it runs automatically and you don't have to think about it again unless you use up your storage quota or need to retrieve a file. (There are other online backup services, and I'll mention some of them next week, but Mozy is the one I have the most experience with.)

Bear in mind that the first backup with any online service will take several hours, and it's definitely not suitable for people with dial-up connections.

Free Backup Software

I remain a fan of Karen's Replicator for file backups, and also use SyncBack Free, which can be set to copy data from one drive to another whenever the computer is idle. I just recommended DriveImage XML to a client to replace his outmoded version of the now-extinct Drive Image 7. If you've got a little bit of technical know-how, you can download one of these and set it up for someone as a present.

USB Flash Drives

USB sticks (also known as key drives or thumb drives) are ubiquitous and cheap. They don't make good long-term storage, but they're still better than having no second copy of your data at all, and you can easily store them in a safe deposit box away from your office. You can also get them branded with your company logo. Your employees and customers are sure to find them more useful than pens or key chains.

External Hard Drives

Capacities are going up and prices are coming down. Large-capacity external drives make good gifts for people who take thousands of digital photos, have massive music collections, and make videos of every event in their children's lives. (For these people you might even want something that acts as a media server.) All those things can take up a lot of space.

If the intended recipient travels a lot, one of the smaller external drives like the Western Digital Passport, Maxtor OneTouch Mini, or Seagate FreeAgent Go is probably a better choice. The Ur-guru has a good half-dozen of the Passports, all in shiny (fingerprint-attracting) black. I've got one each of the Seagate and Maxtor drives. All of them come with backup software pre-installed.

Rebit

If you have technophobes with new laptops on your list, it could be worth investing in a Rebit. They're pricier than ordinary external hard drives, but they're very simple and they run continuously in the background without noticeably hindering performance. And they're cute. Like the online services, though, Rebit takes a long time to create the initial backup.

Network Drives

If you have multiple computers in one home or office, a network drive may be the way to go. I've written extensively about my Maxtor Shared Storage II (also pictured above--it's the one that looks like a cinder block). Other options include the Buffalo Linkstation and Western Digital's My Book World Edition. The My Book has a little problem with multimedia files, though: it doesn't want you to upload them to the Internet, even if you made them yourself and own the copyright.

Network drives tend to be on the expensive side, not to mention being a bit large to fit in stockings, but they can be very useful.

Merry Backup to all, and to all a good night.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor,Rebit,Western Digital,Seagate,Buffalo Linkstation,Karen's Replicator,SyncBack,DriveImage XML

Grading the F Drive: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-03-07

I haven't had a chance to check out ION Backup yet, but I did manage to investigate my new FreeAgent Go drive further, and to copy the data from the dying X drive onto the new F drive. (Designating it F, for "FreeAgent," seemed obvious, particularly since that was the default letter Windows assigned to it.)

One thing I discovered in the course of checking out Seagate's drive management interface was that it's possible to turn off that annoying yellow light. Click the FreeAgent Launcher icon in the system tray, select "Utilities" from the pop-up menu, and then choose "Adjust Drive Lights." Whereas the X drive's green light indicated drive activity, and flickered more or less in time with the drive's spin rate, the three-inch-wide, half-inch-high light on the FreeAgent Go doesn't seem to indicate anything except that the drive is getting power. That much light for that little information is overkill.

The case I had for the X drive was also equipped with a bright blue "cooling light," the purpose of which was to help dissipate excess heat. I rarely saw that light, because the drive didn't get particularly hot. The new drive is also reassuringly cool to the touch, and you can adjust the sleep interval from 3 minutes all the way to "never."

As I mentioned before, the new drive has twice the capacity of the drive it's replacing. Even after I painstakingly dragged all the files over from the X drive (which took several tries, as the connection kept dropping, and a couple of hours, because the 80 GB drive was almost full), I'd only filled in 46% of the space.

Checking Out Ceedo

Since nature and I abhor a vacuum, I thought I'd fill a few of those empty megabytes by checking out Ceedo, the software which is designed to make the FreeAgent(TM) Go mimic your computer. As I had suspected from reading about it, Ceedo is the hard-drive equivalent of U3 for memory sticks. Not only does it work almost exactly the same, displaying a list of programs and options in an approximation of the Windows Start Menu, most of the programs available for installation are the same.

Where a U3 memory stick shows up as two drives, however, the FreeAgent(TM) Go only occupies one drive letter, with the Ceedo program files in a subfolder. Like the U3 launchpad, the Ceedo easy access menu displays your remaining drive space along with the list of programs. Ceedo also makes it clear which programs are being run from Ceedo rather than Windows, by framing the windows with an orange outline. (You can change the color, but orange is good for warnings and stands out against the blue theme I use on Enna.)

You can also buy something called Argo, which lets you install any Windows program on your Ceedo drive. The idea is to install it on the portable drive rather than on any one computer. The up side is not worrying about single-user licenses. The down side is the lag time created by the USB 2.0 connection. Although I have found copying data to and from the FreeAgent(TM) Go drive satisfyingly fast (faster, certainly, than the 10/100 network connection to my Z drive), and although the drive spins at 5400 RPM instead of the more standard 4200 RPM of my two internal drives, it always takes longer to access external drives. That could lead to a noticeable and irritating lag time when using some of these programs, particularly if they require a lot of read-write functions.

And while there's a long list of Argo-compatible products, including Dreamweaver, Quicken, and Nero Burning ROM, not a single Microsoft Office program is to be found on the list.

FreeAgent™ Tools

For me, Ceedo and the programs it lets you run are mostly a distraction, because I already have the U3 memory stick and I'm much more likely to carry that around than the FreeAgent(TM) Go. My primary interest was in storage space, though I wanted a drive portable enough to take on a vacation or business trip. I think Ceedo would be quite useful for those without laptops, or who regularly shuttle between a computer at work and a computer at home.

For the backup-obsessed, Seagate's own FreeAgent(TM) Tools are more interesting. (Unlike U3, which has Disk Hero, Ceedo doesn't offer a backup program.) Folder Sync is designed to update the files on your FreeAgent(TM) Go whenever you change them. If you take the drive from one computer to another, it will update the second computer with the files from the FreeAgent drive.

Presumably because of the automatic-sync function, you can't back up your Outlook .pst file using Folder Sync. That restriction means I can't use Folder Sync as my sole backup tool for this drive, so I went back to Karen's Replicator and updated all the jobs to copy files to the F drive instead of the Z drive.

The only problem with this is that synchronized files don't get stored in the same folders as other documents, so I now have two copies of some of my files. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because I can revert to the previous day's file if I really mess something up, and only the files I'm currently working on are in the Folder Sync directory. It's pretty much impossible to have too many copies of important client files, at least until the project is over.

Rather like the backup program that came with the Maxtor Shared Storage II, Folder Sync has a fairly limited set of features. It's not even as configurable as Replicator, which is freeware. But it's easy to set up and it does what it claims to do. I'm not about to object to having one more backup tool at my disposal.

There's one other function of FreeAgent(TM) Tools that I first noticed while exploring my C drive: you can encrypt files by right-clicking on them. This works on files stored on any drive, at least once you've installed FreeAgent(TM) Tools. But there's no blanket password-protection option for the drive itself, the way there is with U3. You can, however, password-protect Ceedo. That works much the same way a Windows logon does: it can keep you from using the programs, but doesn't prevent access to the contents of the drive.

Best Features

So far, the things I like best about the FreeAgent(TM) Go drive are:

1. 160 GB (twice the size of the X drive)
2. 5400 RPM (faster than the X drive)
3. Only one cable (even though it uses 2 USB ports)
4. Real-time Folder Sync
5. 5-year warranty

And the only thing I really don't like about the drive is that yellow light. So I'm giving the F drive an A-.

Back Up Your Passwords: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-22-07

After reading last week’s backup reminder, Mike Van Horn wrote in to ask (or complain) about passwords:

Groan.

Passwords. Maybe this is a future topic for you, because it's closely related to backing up.

Why don't you poll your readers: How do people remember their passwords? Let alone user names.

If you do as the experts say, and use regularly changing random strings of characters, how can you possibly remember them? I can't. I have trouble typing them in correctly even if I'm looking at them -- esp. if as I type it produces only a string of little black balls on the monitor.

User names are just as bad, because there are so many different format rules: Just type in your name. All lower case. No spaces. 8 characters max. My name is already taken, so I have to add a few numbers.

For several years, I had one password and I used it for everything.

Then I came up with different passwords for each thing. I kept a list of the service, my user name, and the password I chose. I taped this list to my monitor, but it keeps getting longer and longer. And I'm still never changing them. This list is at the office, so if I need a password when using my home computer, I can't remember it.

Then I sign up for some new service or blog or whatever, write that new user name and password on a scrap of paper, then lose it before it gets added to the "master list." I've stopped using a number of internet services because I lost the password and it's just too much hassle to retrieve it.

Now I've entered my list into my computer, so it's accessible and editable any place I can get to my files. (No, hackers, it's not in a file named "Passwords.") But of course the computer must be on—and working, and it must be accessed from one of my computers.

I'm surely not the only password dunderhead.

How do others handle all this?

Passwords certainly qualify as critical data you don’t want to lose, though many websites will let you re-set them if you can answer a security question. Taping a list of passwords onto your computer monitor is certainly not the most secure way to store them.

Not only is using the same password for everything not a good idea, it just isn’t possible, for the reasons Mike outlined: different sites have different rules about what constitutes an acceptable password.

I do have a handful of passwords I can remember which I use for more than one thing, but remembering which password I’ve used for which site can be a challenge.

For years I’ve used a very basic, simple password storage program called “Password Prompter.” How basic? I first got it when I was using Windows 95. You enter a password to open the program, then create entries for your different logins and passwords. I just have Karen’s Replicator copy the whole directory in order to back it up.

There are dozens of password storage utilities out there. Some of them are even free. Access Manager Professional lets you back up your passwords to two separate locations, simultaneously. KeePass is a sophisticated open-source program which uses strong encryption, requires no installation, imports from other programs, and fits on a USB stick.

And speaking of USB sticks, I went out and bought a U3 flash drive so I could learn more about it. (You may remember that I mentioned this a few weeks ago.) I’ve been playing with it while writing this. There are actually a few different password management programs available for U3. I opted for the free SignUpShield, but I’m thinking I may just copy my trusty Password Prompter (which, like KeePass, requires no installation and takes up very little space) onto the memory stick instead. It will save re-entering passwords.

There are also backup programs for U3. The one I installed is called “Disk Hero.” And guess what it asks for as soon as you start it? Yes, a password. Once you enter that and an e-mail address, it sets up an account for you online and gives you options for what to back up. You can back up your whole U3 drive, just your data, or even files from the “guest PC” (the machine the U3 drive is connected to). The U3 version of the program comes with 2 GB free storage—more space than is on my U3 drive.

The point of having a U3 drive is to be able to duplicate the experience of working on your own computer by having your programs, contacts, etc with you. You can just about automate that by paying for the Migo software, but there are plenty of free programs which will let you store contacts and bookmarks and check your mail.

Given that there’s so much sensitive data on a U3 drive, it’s a good thing you can password-protect it! Use a strong password as the main key to the drive. That means nothing you can find in the dictionary: include numbers and characters like #, -, *.

I like to use Mycenaean Greek as a source for passwords, because Linear B is transliterated with hyphens between symbols. Even if you take the hyphens out, the spelling isn’t quite the same as for Classical or Modern Greek, and not very many people know Greek to begin with, so the likelihood anyone will guess these passwords is small.

Failing knowledge of obscure languages, you can use a password generator to give you a complex, random password. Then set yourself to memorize it.

Feel free to share your favorite password-management tips in the comments.

A Vacation from Backups? Not So Fast! FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-08-07

I’m getting on a noon flight to the East Coast for the biennial Goetsch family vacation. This has made the past couple of days a bit crazed, and yesterday was particularly overwhelming. I had to finish a client project first thing in the morning, then go out to take care of a few things that absolutely had to be done before I left, then come back for two back-to-back phone conferences with clients, and then go out to work for a client on-site until dinnertime.

So I didn’t get a chance to write this reminder yesterday. I might have managed to squeeze it in there somewhere, but I was too distracted to think about what to say. I considered just pointing you over to the lengthy discussion of a hapless consultant’s attempts to retrieve hundreds of lost photos from a friend’s machine at ComputerWorld, but I kept getting interrupted when I tried to read it.

The Ur-Guru suggested I should write something entertaining, in honor of the impending vacation, such as “Ten Reasons Not to Back Up.” I was much too stressed out to attempt to be funny (not something I’m all that good at under the best of conditions), but he gave me a start:

1. If your office or home gets raided by what passes for some kind of enforcement these days, no incriminating evidence will be found.
2. Saving money on storage media like CD's and DVD's.
3. Some hacker probably has made a backup of all your important data anyway and you usually can buy it for a small fee which would balance out with the cost otherwise incurred by the backup process.
4. Never again have to say "the backups were unreadable". Since there were no backups, they can't be unreadable either. Save yourself the frustration.
5. Backing up is for people who prefer not to move forward.

You get the idea. :-)

But, as it happens, I did get presented with a backup-related situation. Good timing as far as this Reminder is concerned, if not so great otherwise. Indeed, it pointed out the real disadvantage of storing files on a friend’s computer as a backup method, particularly if you have to go get them in person.

I have a friend who is about to move out of the place she’s renting and put everything in storage for a little while. That includes her computer. She asked me to store her files for safekeeping. Since she mostly has Word docs and a couple of photos, and I have this big network drive, I said “Sure.”

On Wednesday she handed me a borrowed memory stick; I brought it home and copied the files onto my Z drive. This took all of about 5 minutes and was no problem. Later she came and picked up the memory stick so she could return it to the person she’d borrowed it from.

Yesterday I came home with ten minutes before my first phone conference and found two agitated messages on my answering machine. It was my friend, on her way to buy a memory stick of her own, wanting to know “how many megabytes it should be.”

So I called her back and said “512.” Not that it would hurt to have a bigger one, but she’s on a limited budget and she only had about 140 MB of files.

I then unplugged my phone, grabbed my headset, and dialed into my phone conference with Skype. (Among other things, it’s easier to record that way, and since I have a memory like a steel sieve, sometimes I need to go over and check on what we said.) We were about 20 minutes into it when my doorbell rang.

It was my friend, memory stick in hand—well, in package. I was not feeling very sociable, and of course I missed the most interesting topic of the entire business meeting when I went to answer the door. (Good thing I have that recording.) But when else was she going to do it? I’m about to leave town for a week, after all, and she’s moving today.

So after I put the headset back on, I sliced the new memory stick out of its package and stuck it into a free USB port. It turned out to be a U3 memory stick, so it had to go through a few extra hoops during the course of the Add New Hardware routine—which appeared at one point to think that it was a CD-ROM drive.

It kept asking me if I wanted to install the U3 software, and I kept refusing. It’s not my computer that the thing needs to emulate. Eventually it stopped asking and I was able to drag my friend’s files from the Z drive onto the memory stick. That only took about five minutes—during which the quality of my Skype connection notably declined, which you’d think I might have expected since it’s a network drive and using the same ethernet connection that ties me to the Internet.

Then I had to figure out how to eject the thing, because it didn’t show up in the usual “Safely Remove Hardware” dialogue. Of course, if I’d been less distracted, I might have noticed the large red “Eject” button in the U3 window sooner.

My friend asked me about U3, which the clerk at the store had recommended. I’d read about it sometime back, but my current memory stick doesn’t have U3 capacity, and I couldn’t remember very much about it. The idea is to put software (and things like bookmarks) on the memory stick, as well as your documents; you can find out more about it on the U3 website. But for me, since it was now past the time I was supposed to meet a client on WebEx, the idea was to get my friend out the door as fast as possible.

Now it’s time to get myself out the door. That means disconnecting and packing Enna, and disconnecting and packing my X drive. (I’ve already packed the webcam which will let the Ur-Guru join us on vacation.) I’ll only be down one backup method, since I should still be able to do my online backups, and of course the second internal drive travels with the computer. The network drive is definitely staying home.

Wacky Thumb Drive Slide Show

ComputerWorld is offering a Wacky Thumb Drive slide show. I've mentioned some of these, like sushi drives, Tiki drives, and the Swiss Army Knife drives, before. The drives themselves range from the hilarious to the grotesque.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 07-28-06: Back Up Your Presentation

I have to be in San Rafael at 7:15 this morning to give a presentation about podcasting. (I’m not speaking until 9:00, but I still have to be there at 7:15, because the event starts at 7:30.)

My presentation is part of a workshop about using the internet for marketing, and all three presentations rely heavily on technology.

And where there’s technology, there had better be backups. At last count, one presenter was bringing two laptops as well as a second projector. I’m bringing my own laptop, just in case, though at 17” and too many pounds she’s not especially portable. I’d be amazed if the third presenter isn’t also bringing a laptop, just in case.

And, of course, I have multiple copies of my presentation. I sent one to the Executive Team member responsible for running the projector. I have one on a USB key sitting next to me as I type. Then there’s the original on the C drive of my laptop, including all the images and the second file with my “out-takes.” Karen’s Replicator copied that whole directory onto my external drive as soon as I booted up this morning; SyncBack had already copied it onto my second internal drive during the computer’s long, otherwise idle moments printing the handouts.

And if that weren’t enough, I have my entire presentation on my website, including a self-playing PowerPointShow. (If you want to see it, go to the presentation page.) Of course, the lack of wi-fi in the hotel’s meeting rooms would make accessing that a trifle challenging, but nevertheless, I’m confident that whatever might go wrong this morning, lost data won’t be part of it.

Show your school spirit with a flash drive from Staples

When I saw this in Tech Republic's newsletter, I couldn't resist passing it on. Office-supply chain Staples and a manufacturer I've never heard of called PNY (apparently known for manufacturing video cards) have teamed up to create flash drives displaying the colors and emblems of 100 different US colleges and universities. Aimed at both current students and sentimental alums, these key drives are white with the logo on the cap and the college name on the side.

I notice that the University of Michigan, where I spent five years in gradual school, is among the participating colleges, but not Brown University where I did my undergrad. And Stanford has a PNY key drive, but not Cal.

You can order the whole range from Staples.com at $39.99 apiece, but expect 7-14 days' delivery time rather than the usual overnight service.

Just for the record, though—key drives are great for transporting data, but they don't make good backup devices when it comes to longer-term storage.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-09-06: Passport to Backups

I’ve talked about backing up while on the road once or twice before. One of the reasons I got a 2.5-inch external hard drive instead of a less-expensive 3.5-inch drive was so it wouldn’t need its own luggage when I traveled.

Last time the Ur-Guru came to visit, he just backed up his laptop by sending everything to the server back in his home office.

This time he has a new laptop and a handful of drives, each with a different purpose.

First, there are two Western Digital Passport drives, an 80 GB and a 120 GB. The name seems particularly appropriate, since he bought them specifically for traveling overseas. The 80 GB drive contains several TrueImage backups of the laptop (system, software, and data), as well as the ISO of the Bart-PE recovery CD.

The 120 GB drive holds all the data he wanted to have along on the trip, including 18 GB of e-books, icons, source code, and project files for his current clients, a few virtual machines, software he might need to install, and an active synchronized copy of work and project data from the laptop. (He wrote his own script to do the synchronizing.) The rest of the drive holds instructional videos, MP3 music files, and other media. And there’s still enough room (or will be, after we watch the movies) for the photos he’ll be taking.

Then he has a 512 MB memory stick full of utilities he might need anywhere. (I have a similar memory stick which I load up with programs clients are likely to need, like the AVG free anti-virus or Karen’s Replicator.)

There are two more drives, each with a 4 GB capacity. One is a memory stick, one a 1.8-inch disk in a case about 2 x 2.5 inches, with a standard USB plug that tucks into one end. Because it has to spin, it’s slower than the stick, and it gets much hotter when used over an extended period of time. Now that the flash-memory sticks are available in multiple-gigabyte capacities, the Ur-Guru recommends using them instead of the mini-drives.

These two smaller drives serve as rotating backups of the source code for the Ur-Guru’s client project, so that he always has a copy of the current version and a copy of the previous day’s version. He also keeps his current work synchronized with the 120 GB Western Digital drive.

If you’re interested in getting any of them for yourself, the Ur-Guru and I will be happy to answer any questions you have about them.

Until next week—back up early, back up often.

The Hard Drive is the New Bling

Really, I'm not making this up.

Hitachi does the hard drive rap in this Flash animation promoting its Microdrive 3K8 and Travelstar C4K60 Slim as fashion accessories. Enter to win a $500 charm to dangle from your drive, or download the MP3 of the Hitachi bling song.

Personally, I'd rather have the drive than the diamonds and white gold. And I seriously wish I'd had one of the Slims with me yesterday when I needed to clear out 25 GB of space on my external hard drive to back up a client's computer. (Where was the client's external drive? Ah, now, that's the $64,000 question.)

Target Thinks Pink for USB Drives

That's right—if you're looking for a USB key drive in bubble-gum pink, head on over to Target. (You have to go in person; the website only lets you order this Dane-Elec drive in blue or red, either of which I would personally prefer to the pink).

I'm sure my four-year-old niece would love it, but I think Target might be a little off the mark in producing bright pink gadgets and accessories in an attempt to appeal to adult female shoppers. Not many businesswomen are going to want to carry a pink PDA case into a meeting.

As for teenagers, when I was that age, the last thing I wanted to wear was pink, unless it was that several-shades darker verging-on-the-trashy hue that we called Promiscuous Pink. Even then, we usually reserved it for lipstick and nail polish.

That said, I'll admit that all three colors of these little drives are rather cute, and $24.99 for 256 MB isn't a bad price.

At least it's not pastel pink.

Memory Stick Earrings—Sillier than Sushi Drives?

I think this is what you call backup in drag.

"Girl's Guide to Gadgets" blog Shiny Shiny is definitely underwhelmed with the aesthetic appeal of the latest offering from Taiwanese manufacturer Pretec, known for the iDisk Tiny, which the company started billing as "the world's smallest USB flash drive" in 2003. The earrings are a manifestation of the new dime-sized 1 GB CU-Flash.

As far as I can tell, the earrings aren't actually on the market yet, though Pretec's reps will be wearing them to all the gadget shows. Even if I had pierced ears, I wouldn't buy them for looks alone. The iDisk Tiny Luxury and iDisk Aqua are much cuter—and a lot less likely to be scratched or lost.

Everything but the kitchen sink

Looks like Victorinox decided that their standard Swiss Army Knife wasn't useful enough as it was, so they added a USB flash drive to the combo. Capacities range from 64 MB to 1 GB, and prices from just over $50 to just under $200. If that seems expensive for a USB drive, remember that you're also getting a knife, nail file, scissors, screwdriver, LED, key ring, and retractable pen along with your flash drive.

Check out the menu at Dynamism.com

If you thought the Tiki Drive was goofy, check out the Sushi Drives that Dynamism.com has for sale. Here's a whole plateful of USB flash drives cleverly disguised as different kinds of sushi. The plastic sushi exterior is handmade in Tokyo, and Dynamism.com will even ship them with dry-ice packs if you want to buy one for someone as a gag gift. At $59 for a 32 MB tuna or cucumber maki (far left) and $99 for the 128 MB futomaki, uni, uzura natto, maguro, salmon, and ebi (left to right) or the shuumai, tobiko, or takoyaki (not shown), they're a little pricier than standard drives of the same capacity—but a heck of a lot funnier!

Not a sushi fan? Try an iDuck instead—but I wouldn't recommend putting this rubber ducky in the bathtub!

2 for 1 USB Flash Drives at Office Depot

Office Depot is having a buy one, get one free sale this week on PNY's Attache 128 MB USB 2.0 flash drives ($29.99 each; offer available in-store only). If you've been thinking a key drive might be handy for moving between home and office, now's a good time to pick one up.

Flash Drive with a Tiki Twist

Backups are rarely funny, but I had to laugh when I saw this. Guaranteed to appeal to your teenager (or just your wackier side) the Big Tiki Drive from TikiMac features a lighted 6-foot "lava cable" and glowing red eyes, and comes in capacities of 256 MB to 4 GB. Prices range from $59 to $429. At nearly four inches in height, it's bigger and more obvious than most flash drives—but then, that's the point.

While you're visiting the TikiMac online store, you can also pick up a LavaPad (light up your mouse pad in 7 colors) or some LavaWire and LavaUSB cables—or just browse around and enjoy the humorous marketing.

Storage Gadget of the Day

Here's a new way to transfer files from your digital camera to your computer: SanDisk has just created a 1-GB flash memory card that folds open to reveal a USB connector. This saves carrying cables around or worrying about whether the computer you want to download your photos onto has the right kind of card reader.

Since the flash drive is essentially unprotected, I wouldn't go getting one as a replacement for a keychain drive--it's undoubtedly best off safe inside your camera. But it's darned cute, and ingenious, too.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-8-04: USB Flash Drives

Two weeks ago one of my Faithful Readers sent me a New York Times article about USB flash drives as fashion accessories. A day or so later, a colleague showed me a paper sent by his son's school requiring all pupils to buy these drives in order to transport files between home and school.

Flash memory has been around for a while, and Real Geeks were carrying keychain drives at least two years ago while the rest of us were still figuring out which kind of card would fit into our digital cameras. A USB flash drive is similar to those cards—it just has a case around it to let you connect it to a computer without a card reader. These days you can get these USB drives built into pens, watches, and even cosmetics.

But besides being cute and trendy, what are they good for? On the up side, solid state memory technology isn't vulnerable to mechanical breakdown. You will never hear one make that horrible clacking noise that signals a dead magnetic drive. The case protects them from dust and scratches. And they're fast—they don't have to spin in order to write data. You can even use them to transport files between a Mac and a PC (provided both have newer operating systems).

On the downside, flash memory costs more per megabyte than any other kind of storage. Moreover, its capacity is usually limited to less than that of a CD. If you only have a USB 1.1 port on your machine, the slow transfer time will counterbalance the fast write time. And the darn things are easy to misplace, which makes their frequent lack of security features a bit risky.

An M-Systems white paper on flash drive reliability states: "Flash technology is inherently unreliable...The first and foremost problem with flash is the number of erase cycles it can endure...Using the device over the specified number of cycles can cause data loss after even a few days!"

What does this add up to? Flash drives are great for storing data in the short term. If you want to carry files from one computer to another, they're great. But don't use them for anything that you want to store over a long period of time, never mind anything you want permanently recorded. You're better off with a CD or DVD for those things.

And forget being able to store a mirror image of your entire desktop PC's hard drive on one—at least for the next few years.

More backup news and commentary next week,
Sallie