Jared Evans Global Microbrand

Over the last year, I’ve been basically running my laptop and Home PC on a prayer that the hard drives don’t crash and burn which would result a total loss of all my data.

I’ve somewhat migrated this risk by using my 1GB Pen Drive to backup my most critical files.  However, my data needs have been growing beyond this limit and I had to find a better solution ASAP.

My backup requirements are not particularly stringent compared to other people who may depend on the files for their livelihood.  I didn’t need an fully automatic backup process that updated on a nightly basis to an offsite co-location.

I didn’t have a massive collection of ripped music files or a library of DVD movies to store.  I don’t get involved with many computer graphics/animation projects.  While there are some personal multimedia files that I’ve created from some of my vacation trips, they are usually compressed, last for only a few minutes and don’t eat up hard drive space like there’s no tomorrow.  There is just one exception of a single VMWare image of FreeBSD 6.0 that is a good number of gigabytes in length.

Most of my files are usually photos, programming code projects, text files or in several special format that can only be opened by certain programs.  In short, I don’t have gigantic file size requirements but would like a solution that would grow along with my needs for a few years.

I need a solution that would allow me to recover from a virus/spyware attack or a break-in.  I had to be able to store my backup OFFLINE and unattached to any computer or internet between backup runs.  This way, I could safely reformat my computer and restore data that I know were untouched by any program or anyone with malicious intent.  I wanted the peace of mind that there was absolutely no way that anyone could touch the data.

Since my patience is limited, I also wanted to see a very high rate of transfer of data between the storage unit and my computer/laptop.

I ruled out online sites that offer automatic storage via the Internet since I didn’t want to pay a monthly fee and preferred a one-time flat fee.  I was willing to live with the fact that I would have to manually drag n’ drop files between the storage unit and my computers once a month or immediately after creating files that I didn’t want to lose.

To give myself some peace of mind and satisfy my requirements above, I’ve decided to purchase Maxtor OneTouch III (300 GB) external drive!

I’ll probably post something later on when I’ve had a chance to play around with it a bit!