INTRODUCTION
Every computer user who has lost data knows how important it is to always have a back-up. Losing the operating system due to worms and viruses is not uncommon these days, if you need to redo it all you have the necessary tools, like the operating system disk, software supplied by the vendor for DVD drives, monitor, and other peripherals that you may have added to your computer system. The gripe here is that it is at times a very painful exercise, but, it is possible. It’s only DATA that you need to look after and constantly back it up so that you can use the system to get by. If DATA is lost and no back-up is available, the user is left high and dry.
When I upgraded my laptop I also decided that I will do away with the main desktop in the office and use the laptop as a desktop replacement. What prompted me to make a decision like that was because by having both I have to continue to look after two machines at the same time which means, back-up, updates, software installations and the list goes on and on. By having only one machine I could save a lot of time and concentrate on just one machine. Having made the decision and also having bought the right laptop, now I was confronted with the problem of safe back-up of my data.
The laptop provides a solution to back-up the data in a safe area of the hard drive and the bundled software can also restore the data if it is due to operating system crashing or the system is infected with a virus which one is unable to deal with. However, the possibility of the hard drive failure cannot be totally ruled out. I personally had experienced it in my previous laptop. If it happens, you have no data to recover. I bet it is not a very comforting feeling for anyone. You ask: What can we do to avoid it?
THE CHOICES(Possible back-up solutions)
There are many choices that one has today, CD Writers(providing upto 700MB of back-up), Zip Drives with 1GB or more, DVD Writers( upto 4.7 GB) and soon we would also have dual layer DVD Writers capable of 8.5 GB of back-up. All of these back up solutions require not just the hardware but also media to back-up your data to. We have heard folks having problems with certain media as they are not compatible with certain drives. We also hear horror stories of disks becoming unreadable all of a sudden and the data is lost. ‘Once write’ method is a bit costly if you have a habit of backing up your data regularly, say twice a week or even on a daily basis, also you need to constantly discard older copies. The rewritable disks also have a life and can go bad while in use although the manufacturer claims data can be written as many as 1000 times. After all we are humans and we do make mistakes and one bad scratch mark on a disk means the user probably will never be able to retrieve the data from the particular disk.
THE SOLUTION(The chosen Option)
One product that really caught my attention was a mobile drive! Small, lightweight, good data capacity, fast, compatible, easy to install, no media to deal with, bootable with an operating system, choice of connectivity and above all affordable! Sounds too good to be true! But, it is there for anyone to consider instead of a DVD or CD Writer for backing up the data. Lacie USB Mobile Drive is what I opted for. This drive is not a replacement for either DVD Writer or a CD Writer which you may also use to copy software disks, write DVD Video, audio CD’s and MP3’s to. This is for backing up of large amount of data which otherwise may not fit onto disks or may require many disks. The process can be very time consuming and painful.
Lacie Mobile Drive comes in two flavours, USB 2.0(480 Mbits/s) and Firewire(400 Mbits/s). The drive does not require any adaptors and can be powered up with the supplied USB cable. Some laptops provide the adequate power through USB, but, some do not. For those which cannot provide the power, another cable is bundled with the drive which you can use to provide power through a USB link. There is yet another way in case of enough USB ports are not available, the PS2 connector cable. In any case, you will have ample choices to connect this drive to your desktop or laptop with the cables bundled. The drive also comes with a CD containing manual in PDF format and USB drivers for Windows 98SE and Windows ME if you are not using the newer operating systems like Windows 2000 or Windows XP. It also works with Mac OS 9.x or Mac OS X or greater.
The weight of the unit is just 200 grams or 7.05 oz and is small enough to be carried in ones pocket. The capacities available are 20, 40 and 80 GB and one can choose between USB 2.0 or Firewire based on ones existing system capabilities and needs.
There are many other similar mobile drives being offered by other manufacturers, but, I liked it due to its simple design and sober looks – grey aluminium top, side and bottom with brushed stainless steel facia and a single led which flickers when data is written to or read from. Unlike other offerings in funny colour combinations, however, this is a matter of personal preference.
PERFORMANCE(How the unit performed)
The Lacie unit that I got has a Toshiba hard drive, installed capacity of which is 40 GB, spinning at 4, 500 RPM, seek time of less than 12 ms, 2 MB buffer having USB 2.0 connectivity.
I transferred 650 MB of data comprising a single folder having 25 files of different sizes from Lacie to my laptop in about 33.64 seconds at the rate of 19.32 MB/s. This is what one would refer to as the reading capability of the mobile drive. I copied the same file back onto the Lacie, this time wanting to know its write capability; it turned out to be slightly slower at 36.35 seconds at the rate of 17.88 MB/s. That I consider as fast! I also tried another transfer of about same size but this time having few hundred folders and the total number of files in excess of 13, 000. The entire exercise took about 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Even though the data was same size(650 MB) but the time difference was due to the fact that each file was being accessed every time the transfer was taking place from laptop to the Lacie mobile drive. I still consider this to be very, very fast. If I have to back up even on a daily basis I may need only a few seconds a day to replace the files which have either changed or have been created during the day.
The transfer was performed back and forth using the IBM T41 laptop having Pentium M processor rated at 1.4 GHz, 512 MB CL 2.5 DDR Ram and a 40 GB 5, 400 RPM Hard Drive
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Thank you for reading what I write
All text Copyright Quadophile 2004