CDs and DVDs are almost free. You'd need two USB hard drives to have a continuous backup off-site.
I mostly work on the same files so incremental backup on a weekly basis is quick and easy. Though I have thought of getting a second external hard drive and just swapping them back and forth as backups.
CDs and DVDs have lifespans, sometimes a lot shorter than one would expect. With the larger hd's now at very reasonable prices, that's a good way to go. sheesh, we can get flash drives these days bigger than the hard drives on our old computers in the nineties.
SteveB
Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10
Flash drives have lifetimes, too. Their lifetimes are based on usage, not bit rot. Depending on the dye and the CD-drive, a CD can last decades or more (or only a few weeks). A Flash Drive is good for at least a few thousand read-write cycles.
The problem with online backups is you don't always have access to the internet. In fact, my connection went down for about 5 hours yesterday. Rare, but it happens. If I needed to recover a file I would be out of luck until the connection resumes.
Also, if you have a complete drive failure and need to rebuild, you wouldn't be able to access the net to restore your backup. With a local image backup on an external drive I can restore quickly and easily.
Even if you don't keep personal records, music, video, photos, etc., you still have many personal settings, bookmarks, and whatnot that are a major hassle to reconfigure when things go wrong.
CDR's (and DVDR's) are notoriously unreliable for long term storage. I have had so many disks fail on me after relatively short storage (less than a year) that I gave up on them years ago. I only use CD/DVD's for quick storage such as mailing a disk to others.
A USB flash drive will give you more storage, in less space, and is reusable. But, the long term storage is uncertain also.
I personally use two external 1TB USB hard drives to make full image backups of my hard drive at least once a week. I keep one in my desk for quickly recovering from simple accidents, then swap it once a month or so with the second drive I keep in my safe deposit box at the bank.
Anthony Watson Mountain Software
FWIW I clone the entire computer to a HD (so I can boot from the other HD if needed) and use off-line for specific stuff like my photos, my business files, etc. I also have a zip drive for specific biz files (I am a writer so I tend to save articles to the zip file when I am done writing on them for that session). That way I have the clone if everything goes all fershugina, the zip drive for minor melt downs on current projects, and the off-site in case of fire, flood, earthquake or pestilence. I am a belt and suspenders kind of guy (grin).
Since Google shows only 13 hits for "fershugina" and at least four of them are yours, I have to conclude that it's not a real word. I've been searching through the Yiddish dictionary for a while now with no hits:
meshugener meh?shoog'?en?er / meh?shig'?en?er (m.) madman, crazy person, lunatic
There's another list (
Farshlugginer: Refers to a mixed-up or shaken item. Generally indicates something of little or dubious value.
That sounds a little closer to the mark.
Of course, that sec Mashugga: Crazy
while the first list decries that Yiddish has no double letters (apparently not true in multiple dimensions).
Actually, your spelling is Italish or Yidian, a combination of Yiddish and Italian found mostly in neighborhoods like Boro Park and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn where Jews and Italians lived side-by-side for decades.
Even the Urban Dictionary didn't have anything for "fershugina" - this was as close as it got:
-- Bobby G.
It was something I picked up from Mad Magazine WAYYYYY back in the day. They had various kinda-sorta-but-not-quite Yiddish words that they would use. IIRC (and I can't find my copy of Ridiculously Expensive Mad right off to confirm) I first saw it in a Wallace Wood take-off called BatBoy and Rubin. I probably fractured even their spelling over the years. I liked the sound and thought it went well with what was trying to be communicated (grin).
>
So they're twice nothing. So what? CDs are too unreliable.
More than hundreds of thousands of *write* cycles (unlimited reads). If you use the drive for backup you'll never exceed its lifetime.
I think they're called safede posit Boxes. That is safe deposit boxes.
An awful lot of people say safety deposit, but I think that's because they tack the de on the end of safe, and others have learned from them.
I bought a 16 gig flash drive at a swap meet, for about 1/2 the normal price. It would accept data, but forget it within a few minutes. Once I made it from the second floor to the basement with a few files, but usually it wouldn't be there when I got there.
It was a no-name brand, but still.
After I pressed send I realized that I had seen something like it before in Mad. I think it's one of many Yiddish words that got "repurposed" for use in the magazine.
furshlugginer An aracane adjective used as an expletive in the earliest issues of Mad magazine (e.g. 1950's) - comparable to "garshdarned" (see examples). However, maybe it's true that it was also used to mean 'asshat' later on, as claimed above.) Possibly a parody of some German or Yiddish word, I suspect. Correct spelling may actually be 'furshluggenner'.
1) What the hell IS that furshlugginer thing?!? 2) Get that furshlugginer thing out of here! 3) Why would anyone waste their time on a furshlugginer thing like that?!?Potrezebie was another such word.
Mystery solved!
-- Bobby G.
I've not had problems with CDs going bad.
I have commercial (music) CDs that are 25 years old that play fine, but I guess those are made with different technology from my computer burning them.
People claim that videotapes go bad after a few years, but I found a batch that my brother recorded in the mid-eighties (Hill Street Blues episodes, for example) that played just fine a few years ago.
I'd trust a CD over a mechanical hard drive, especially one that gets transported back and forth somewhere on a weekly basis.
I do incremental backups every week or two and full backups every few months. Important and small files I can email to myself.
Kurt Ullman wrote in news:nIudnaV0ONtZiezQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
What software and hardware would you recommend for cloneing (cloning?) the computer hard drive? I use Windows XP on a desktop. I do back up files occasionally on a USB external hard drive, but have never made a bootable clone.
Thanks,
Tom
I have used HD Clone with great results:
I normally use Macrium Reflect for day to day image backups.
Anthony
Yes, commercial CD's are pressed and usually last a long time without problems. Recordable CD's and DVD's use organic dyes that degrade over time, typically from the outer edge and growing inward. Thus, a CD that is completely full (i.e. for backups) is more likely to have data loss than a disk with a few files stored on it (the outer edge can degrade without reaching your data area). Still, it is a real guessing game whether the disk will still be usable when you need it.
Videotapes (or any magnetic tape) generally hold up fine in storage as long as they are cool, dry, and stored away from magnetic fields. They should be stored on edge (not flat) so the tape doesn't "droop" on the spools over time. Ideally you should fast forward and rewind the tape every now and then to keep the tape from sticking to itself.
Video and cassette tapes generally go bad from repeated playing, a combination of friction, stretching, and weak magnetic fields from the heads. The absolute worse case is making a copy, of a copy, of a copy, etc... :)
Of course, the last company making consumer VCR's stopped making them a year or two ago. So even if the tape is good, finding a machine to play them on could be a problem later on.
ALL backup media WILL fail at some point. That's why it is so important to have multiple backups, and keep at least one off site somewhere in case of fire, flood, theft, etc.
Yes, you could drop your hard drive and break it, you could step on your USB flash drive and crack it, a CD could degrade, or your DVD could melt and warp in sunlight. Of course, CD's and DVD's can only be used once, and the rewritable versions have limited lifespans. USB flash drives have relatively low storage capacity for their price.
On a simple cost basis, hard drives are hard to beat. I only paid something like $150 or less for a 1 TB external 2.5" USB hard drive. A hard drive is fast, and I can keep multiple backups on a single drive. So far I have never had a backup drive fail on me, but it is sure to happen at some point. That's why I have multiple backup drives. I usually end up upgrading to newer (larger) drives before they ever have a chance to go bad.
Anthony Watson Mountain Software
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Home Cookin Recipe Software
Home Suite Address Book, Password Manager, Car Records Log
Milestones Calendar Software
Actually, it's not better than nothing.
I used Partition Magic because it would do a lot more, but others have had good luck with Ghost.
I believe that the law and banking procedures changed in the last couple of years so checks clear almost immediately, electronically, without having to ship checks across the country to be manually entered and cleared.
So it no longer works to draw checks on far-away banks, as far as clearing goes. (when it comes to your own bank giving you credit for the funds, that's a different story as I don't know if that law has changed, but that's an issue for the recipient of the funds, not the payer)
Older versions of Ghost, yes, as long as the drives involved are small enough for it to deal with. (I still have a copy in my toolkit, and use it for cloning XP boxes.) The later Ghost, after they got eaten by Norton/Symantec, not so much. Big and bloated and much more complex to use. I don't think it was even the same program- they just bought the name because of the good rep it had, and stuck it on their own inferior programming.
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