Just before last Christmas I got myself a new external hard disk: a iomega HDD 160Gb. It installs itself without drivers, got recognised instantly both in my Windows and Linux environments, using a USB 2.0 connection. My original idea was to get an easier backup mechanism than burning CDs over and over again.
Actually, the device comes with 2 great pieces of software:
A. I use Iomega Backup to synchronize my laptop hard disk with the external hard disk: I only take my data directories and my desktop. It's automatic (my settings are every night, but you can go down to the minute) and runs in the background. Hence, if my computer is stolen, I have immediate access to my data. Nevertheless I will have to reinstall the applications on a new computer.
b. I use Norton Ghost every weekend to create an exact image of my hard disk (it's manual, and takes about 1h15 - launch it before going to bed). If my hard disk crashes, I can call Sony's Customer Care center and get the hardware fixed immediately (I use a vaio Z1). Then I can just reinstall my PC by copying the mirror image in less than 2 hours ;)
It's good policy and a treat to yourself to backup your important data!
Remember: NEVER buy a laptop without a 3 year warranty as laptops tend to crash all the time. Even the one I'm typing on had a hardware problem after 3 months. In and out from customer care in 4 days, hardware replacement, no problem since. I had to change 3 times the mother board on my previous laptop...). Get a BACKUP solution as well.
Now...
Jsut before going on holiday, I decided to copy my whole collection of data backup CDs onto this hard disk... It happens that I had a lot of redundant stuff, but even more so, lots of CDs of pictures that I never look at, precisely because they are on CDs that are stored somewhere. What a pleasure to rediscover old digital pictures! They are now all neatly stored on a directory and I have over 20Gb of data. This trend is going to increase as cameras offer more and better resolution (my new Sony 150P takes 3Mb pictures by default...) Watch the products and stock prices of companies offering personal storage to consumers...
I use picasa to browse through my pix (by the way Picasa 2 is out - get it now!).
I should find a screen saver to run through them as well... Any ideas ?
It seems my next purchase will be a 300Gb hard drive purchase: check the ones from Maxtor!
I wish they all came with Ethernet connection so that I can just plug them onto my wifi access point. iomega has such a product already... Expect also the home multimedia set top boxes sector to pick as well. Alienware has cool device as well...
Update: Le Danois posted this morning his experience with a network drive. Is he reading this blog ;) ? Check it out.
