Advice please!

[Lindad]

I use a laptop which has only a R-CD-ROM. I back up all my important settings, data and images each day via on online web-based back-up service. However, eventually, with all the census images etc. that I'm currently saving for myself and others(!) at some point my hard disc is going to fill up.

I'm wondering whether it would be best to opt for an external R-W-CD-ROM or an external zip drive.

Any suggestions or recommendations please?

Please don't suggest I buy a PC (I haven't got the space for it) or another laptop with an integral R-W facility (I can't afford it)!

Thanks!

[Rod Neep]

It is possible to obtain an external CDRW drive that will work from a USB port (assuming that your laptop has one). CDR disks are very cheap these days so they are ideal for backups. (Watch out for "re-writable" CDs though, as they can become unreliable).

An alternative, but actually more expensive in the long run, (because of the cost of disks) is a 250Mb Iomega Zip drive, which will also run off a USB port.

Regards
Rod

[Lindad]

Thanks Rod. I know that these are my two options... I'm just not sure which is the best option??? If anyone has any wisdom or experience to share, I'd appreciate it before I go and spend my money!

[Docwras]

If you plan to use a CD Writer to back up be wary of a couple of things... make sure you use good quality CD-R's, and good quality burning software. I found out the hard way that not all software was good! (My writer came with Easy CD - which is, as it says, dead easy to use, and lets you use a CD-R as a giant floppy effectively, except after a while it became unstable and corrupted around half a dozen disks so that they were unreadable, so no longer any good as a backup! - I now use Nero Burning Rom, which I can say, has worked flawlessly for me and was worth buying the full version - although some writers do come with this instead of Easy CD/Roxio.)

Zip drives have their uses but they can also suffer from failure - this is known as the "click of death" by techies, and once that happens your zip drive is dead and your data could also be corrupted.

You should also bear in mind that we don't yet know how long CD-R's will survive as good storage - they've not really been around long enough to make reliable judgements, although we have best guesses. Commercial CD's are believed to have a longer lifespan as they are produced in a different way and use a different technology (they are pressed not burned).

Another option that hasn't been mentioned is an external (USB) hard drive for back up. These are now reasonably priced and will store a lot more in a smaller physical space, and have the advantage of being able to plug into any PC with a USB port and your data is there and immediately accessible. May be worth considering instead of the other devices or as an additional backup alongside a CD-Writer.

Finally, always make more than one back up of precious data - if all your data is one one disk and it gets sat on, dropped, scratched, lost, etc. you're stuck, so make two copies of any disk. After all, a backup is only useful if it works!

[christopher_n_lewis]

Hi Lindad

As my sytem and needs have grown, I now use a Zip drive plus Iomega software for daily backups, and a CD-RW for weekly backups using Microsoft Backup (in Windows 98). The Zip disk stays in the drive all the time, but the CD is taken to another room after the backup - but I only started to do that because I kept finding the CD in the drive when putting in others! But it is a sensible thing to do, and now it has become habit.

So far (touch wood) I have not had any trouble with the Zip drive, but the disks are expensive, so I reuse them in a constant cycle. The articles about backups generally say to discard the media after being used three times, but I don't do that.

I have also had the fault mentioned above using InCD, and now do a new, complete backup onto a fresh disk when that happens.

If I were starting afresh, I would go for an internal CD/DVD combo device, or an external one if I had to. This is for convenience and future proofing - my guess is that some form of optical device is going to be supported for far longer than Zip drives.

Christopher

[Lindad]

Thanks for all these suggestions and advice.

Back-ups are not really the problem as I use something called NetBackup, a service provided via BT. They automatically upload all my data and settings each night so that, should I have a hard disc failure (as I did several months ago) after getting it fixed, I can just download everything again. It worked like a charm and I got EVERYTHING back (data, emails, favourites, desktop settings, the lot) although it was fairly slow to download!

My main concern is really to find the most most effective way of increasing my hard disc capacity. I recently purchased a digital camera, not least because after *!*!* years I've run out of space when it comes to storing photograph albums... but how do you cope with *!*!* years' worth of digital images, and census downloads, and............. everything else?

At the moment, I think I'm beginning to head in favour of a USB storage facility... or two...

[Kath Betts]

You don't say what your operating system is. You need to have a reasonably upto date one for it to cope with USB at a reasonable rate, the old USB can be a little slow on external CD writers.

As long as you have 2000 or XP, performance will not be a problem. An external hard drive may well be your safest option.

Kath

[coenmfam]

Totally endorse what Kath Betts said, get an USB connected Hard Drive

with one proviso
get it partitioned
so that instead of appearing as one drive it appears as more than one
( eg D,E,F .... Drives ) even though it is one physical drive

This is for a number of reasons.
* There is a limit to the size of drive that Windows 98 can see
* Different drives can store different types of information
for example you might have a
D Drive for all your Genealogy data
E drive for all other data
F Drive for Backups of all your system programmes and settings

hope this helps
Neville

[Lindad]

Many thanks for all your suggestions! Have just been away on holiday and got totally carried away with the digital camera... so will need to increase my disc space very soon!!