Does anyone know where to find a little metal box that I can screw to the wall. I want to put one of those USB memory sticks in it, connected by a USB extension lead to the PC.
I was wondering about a metal plate with a sort of hump in it for the memory stick, and then just screw that to the wall or desk with a couple of clutch headed screws. It's just to back up my most important data, and I want the memory stick to be left behind even if someone takes the PC. It's not worth a thief's time to mess around too much for a £10 memory stick, so fairly basic security is all that's required.
I was vaguely thinking of cutting up a tin can and beating it into shape. As I'd probably end up at A&E trying to do that, I thought I would ask first if there's anything ready-made that would do the job?
I would think that if you just tape it to the underside of the desk or behind a drawer, no tealeaf will bother working out what's on the end of the lead they just ripped out.
If I was trying to do it as cheaply as possible I'd sandwich the memory stick between two pieces of wood (to allow clearance for the connector) and screw it all to the underside of the desk top.
If all your stuff fits on one memory stick what is the problem? Why invite vindictive thieves to bash you little box complete with contents, or even take it with them thinking it must be important if you have bothered to take this trouble over it?
Back up your stuff to several memory sticks and keep them in different places away from the pc. [Bit of a pain trying to write wots in them on the piddly little things though!]
Now if you had a load of stuff - like pictures - then you'd need two say
500gig usb hard drives and/or networked storage (Much cheaper than all those old photo albums and developing and printing costs.).
More likely to be of importance to you is the software and your profile settings including email dbxs or psts, that they will get away with on the pc and will be a pain to replace. You would do well to get Acronis True Image, and keep an image or two of your pc hard drive on your back up ones, so that when you replace your stolen pc you can turn it's hard drive into a clone of the original (Assuming you have kept at least one of your backup drives hidden away from the pc.) Acronis also backs up your personal files.
[Having said all this, I still haven't got around to imaging my drives, while I tidy them first - and this is a pretty dumb risk I am taking :-( ]
S [PS - I've just lost my 'profile' on our laptop, as it decided to make me a new one in a temp file. I found the old files, but the old settings and the email and google earth cache are still not associated with my enforced new profile... grrr there is more to backing up than you think...]
Available from your friendly local electrical wholesaler in metal, plastic, white or blue. They will look like part of the building infrastructure and will be ignored in haste ...
I would consider attaching a drive to your Apple Airport Extreme router. (You *do* have one of those, don't you? Doesn't everyone?) Then it can even be wireless.
Thanks to everyone for the advice. In the end, I found an old removable metal drive rail that's just the right size and suitably nondescript. I can post pics if people even remotely interested. :)
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