Pack Up All Up All Your Cares and Woes
By J. Allen Leinberger

Remember the original “Rollerball” movie? The one with James Caan?
There was a scene in there where a computer scientist announced that he had “lost” the 13th century. All of the accumulated knowledge of those hundred years was contained in one computer and it had crashed.
We don’t have that problem any more.
Today most computers have a save function built in. Even so, back up systems of various sorts have been around for a while. For most of the ‘90s those little 3.5-inch floppies held everything we could ask for. As space demands grew, the Zip drive became popular.
Now, as I have reported before, those little flash sticks have become ubiquitous. And they are getting smaller and cleverer. Originally they were two inches long with a USP plug on one end and they held up to 500 MB. The Kingston Technology Company now makes several different designs, each for a specific purpose. Some are MAC or PC specific. Some carry security systems to protect your information, should it fall out of your pocket. Some come with built in games, as they are designed for high-speed gaming demands.
Two to four gigabytes is about average today. By Christmas they will surely be higher. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes as well. One tiny little thing is sort of X-shaped in red plastic. It is called the Data Traveler or DT Mini Fun. It holds four gigs and comes with two free games built in. Others have covered or slide out USB connectors. Some have eyelets to run cords through, so you won’t lose them. Some come in colors. Some are being made up as promotional giveaways. These are usually preprogrammed with material about the sponsoring company. Their logo can be found printed on the side.
But for really big jobs you need to look at the state of the art in external hard drives. Sure, these devices have been around for years, but the modern wonders are generations beyond the 20th century.
Western Digital’s line of desktop hard drives is even environmentally friendly. They require less electricity and are quieter and cooler than their predecessors. Running with less power and running cooler can ultimately add greater long-term reliability to them as well. As with many advances in computing, gamers are responsible for many of the HD advances. Faster response time and larger storage capacity are demanded for such activity.
Of course, other areas of the digital technology also have affected the hard drive development. Music, movies, photos and new programming all demand more and more storage space and you have a choice of buying a newer, bigger computer, or plugging a new hard drive into the one you own right now. This is especially important if you have large files that need to be transported from, say, the office to the home. The WD Passport series is there for such demands. The last time I crashed my entire iTunes collection it disappeared. Now I have put my entire music and photo libraries on a Passport to save them. Not that it matters to me but Passports come in a variety of colors as well.
The really big bang in external HD is the WD My Book Series. They are described as “high-performance dual drive storage systems.” They have quad interface and Raid 0 (Striped) in order to provide “a perfect blend of maximum performance and power savings.”
If that does not impress you, try this. They come in one or two TERABYTES!!! Best of all, for me at least, they are designed to be MAC-friendly. They work seamlessly with the new MAC program called Time Machine. This is a really dummy-proof program that copies your entire computer every hour, or whatever you set it for. It does it automatically. You don’t have to push a button or remember to hit SAVE when you answer the phone.
With the 2T hard drive everything that I had in the computer on June 23 can be called up right now, just in case I lost something. Since the device is called My Book, you can imagine that it sits, like a silver book on my desk next to my computer. I don't have to think about it. I don't even remember that it’s there half of the time. It just quietly does its job, with a little light that runs up and down like a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica.
There is one very important part of all of this and it’s not about selling you one of these devices. Many times I have talked to people who got some message on their computer that they were running out of hard drive space. Too often they panic and delete files or programs that they need. A good external hard drive, even a four gig flash stick, can help you save what needs saving without dumping valuable stuff. Your photos, your music, your term papers and thesis, not to mention videos and movies. These things can be preserved without taking up valuable internal hard drive space that you need for day-to-day work. The investment in a flash stick or a My Passport Elite Portable USB Drive can help you clear your computer without regret later.
Maybe you don’t need a My Book Studio Edition with 2 TB tied to your Time Machine program, but just like insurance or a spare tire, it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.