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Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - (see all news for this day)
work locally & backup externally? - 01:18 PM
(filed under 'general')
when i got my new laptop, i got an external drive to go with it. the reason for this was because i wanted lots of storage space, but the other reason is for security. if the internal drive ever dies, i won't lose all my data. also, since i have the computer on a rental plan, if i choose to upgrade near the end of the contract rather than buy it out, i won't have to do any data transfer, i'll simply have to plug in my hard drive.
when i took it to byron bay with me, i took the external drive so that i could have access to my files—for instance, i showed sherry some past video & pictures of smiley. i was glad to have it with me. i was travelling by car, though, & only needed to carry all my stuff from the car & up the stairs into the house.
when i've taken it to uni with me, i've had to carry it much further, so i've not taken the hard drive with me. instead, i've simply copied the files to which i need access over to the c drive & then copied them back to the external drive for safe storage once i was back at home. however, i accidentally over wrote a full page of study notes with a file that had only one line on it. at least it wasn't an assignment or anything, but i'm still annoyed.
so now i'm trying to decide which is the best way to work so that i know without doubt which drive has the most up to date files. should i work on the local drive & then backup to the external drive? that would make most sense, i suppose, since then i'll always be carrying the newest file, whether i have the external drive with me or not.
you really don't need to answer if you don't have any suggestions. i guess i'm just thinking 'out loud', so to speak.
there's sure to be some sort of backup program out there that can choose which folders i backup, in which direction, to which drives, & do it relatively automatically. something that is more reliable than my brain, i mean. lol! 
I use filesync, which checks file sizes, dates and times to decide which is the newest and you can check before the transfer.
see here http://www.fileware.com/products.htm#FileSync
hth
dean
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