USB Backup Drives

[drfsupercenter]

My mom's birthday was a few days ago, and my dad bought her one of those USB backup drives, that you plug in and it automatically backs your data up.

I was telling my parents that the whole idea seemed dumb, and they disagreed.

Here's my reasoning:

1. If you get a virus, and it infects your files, it will also affect the files on the USB drive. There's nothing different about that drive from any other drive.
2. The "backup program" opens at will and backs up thousands of files whenever it wants. It doesn't even ask you if you'd like to back up your data. Personally I think that would suck as last thing I want when I'm doing something important is a major CPU using program.
3. Even if you do get a virus, you can just manually back your files up to any ordinary drive - you don't need a fancy "auto backup drive", cheaper ones will do the same.

Now I may be wrong on these points, but does anyone else here find those supposed automatic drives annoying? Personally, if someone gave me a 250GB drive like that I'd use it for storage and not backup. But then again, I have my partitions set up so that I wouldn't lose anything should drive C be wiped.

[Chewy]

couldn't have said it better myself, but would you really want to try to teach your mom all the stuff you've learned in the last year

let her feels secure with her automation and in a year or so when it all crashes anyway then maybe she'll give you the drive

[drfsupercenter]

LOL Chewy, I'd rather trade her my 60GB USB enclosure (with IDE drive) for that 250GB, her hard drive is not even 100GB! (I think total backup was 8GB or so, LOL)

My mom has no idea what it does, it wasn't her idea. She even asked me to hook it up (now it wouldn't be so bad without the software - my dad thought it was strange that I didn't have to use the Device Setup Wizard, all that does it give it a letter and Windows does that anyway)

[Chewy]

you all are networked aren't you, makes it a shared drive and fill it up when she's not watching



there I go again contributing to the .........

[doctorhardware]

Chewy you are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad!!!!!!!!!!

[drfsupercenter]

LOL Chewy, USB network accessing USB drive, why do I think that wouldn't go too well? It's like slow²

I just think that my mom doesn't need 250GB when all she has is WordPerfect documents and a few GB of pictures, LOL

[Alien Bay]

The only thing I see wrong with your logic is your assuming your USB drive is connected to the computer when it becomes infected. If you plug in your USB say, once a week, to do backups and then disconnect from your PC, you're protecting your data safely. Also, your assuming that the virus you get isn't going to do bad things to those files you say you can "manually backup". Well that's fine if the virus doesn't hose the hard drive.
Just some thoughts.

[drfsupercenter]

Yes but my parents don't know anything about comptuers so they leave it on automatic to make it easier for them

Mayaswell just open your firewall to hackers, right?