Some time back I had a catastrophic failure on the drive that contained my music library. My backup regimen has not been very robust lately so I lost all my ripped music, some video files, and lord knows what else. It was a little more than a bit perturbing and it made me think of my vast collection of photos. I'd hate to lose them.

I made a vow to do better. Last weekend I was with my family at Costco. They had My Book 500 Gig drives for about $160.

I grabbed two. The first replaced the drive that died on me--I've starting putting my iTunes Library back together again. The second is sitting humming away right now backing up my computer and external drives.

The drives themselves are attractive--although they sit behind my iMac out of site. The size for the dollar seems like a pretty good deal too especially thinking back to my first computer--an Atari ST 520 that had been upgraded to a meg of RAM and had a whopping 20 meg hard drive. It was a hand-me-down from my brother Alec. I used that computer throughout my undergraduate degree. I actually still own it.

The second thing that strikes me is how good the backup software seems to be. Installing it was a snap and it added a little icon to the top right corner of my screen. Clicking on that icon opens up a little wizard that asks what you want to back up and to where. Very simple and quick.

Powered by Qumana