9 October 2003
Alternate Storage & Moving Files
Thursday is a dedicated fiction day. I’m home but I won’t answer the phone for anyone. I keep an eye on my E-Mail but I don’t guarantee a response, at least not immediately.
I went to great lengths to set things up this way and I have had good luck with this system.
So I sat down today to work on the plot line for a new project. I fired up Word and went to the appropriate directory on my hard drive, opened the file. It opened up instantly (I love a fast hard drive!) but it was incomplete. So I slapped myself on the head and said, “That’s right! You made your last changes at work during your break.”
I reached into my backpack and extracted the disk I use to move files back and forth between my computer and work. Threw in the disk, pointed Word at the file I wanted and told it to let ‘er rip.
Problem: Word flat out refuses to open that file. The computer just sits there and the disk drive chews away at the disk. Okay, thought I, let’s try something else. So I shut down Word and fire up Windows Explorer, tell it to copy that file from the disk to the appropriate directory on my hard disk.
Ten minutes I let it sit there. I was just beginning to debate the wisdom of breaking for dinner when the computer pops up one of those infinitely helpful dialog boxes that tells you, “I’m sorry, I can’t do what you’re asking me to do and it’s probably your fault.”
I figure what’s happened is that the surface of the disk has developed a fault right at the point where I have that particular file saved. There could be others that it won’t open as well, but that one I know about. It’s not a terribly big deal, all things considered, because I haven’t lost the file; there’s a copy of it sitting on the hard drive at work. But I want to work on it now and I don’t have it now, and that’s the part that kind of pisses me off.
What this means, of course, is that I have to come up with a safer way of moving files back and forth between work and home. It also means that I have to do it on the cheap, because not only am I a cheap bastard I’m also a poor one.
Okay, then, what are my options?
Well, the cheapest thing I could do in terms of media costs is use CD’s to move files back and forth. As long as the CD doesn’t get scratched your files are safe, and as long as you keep the CD in a decent, safe container it won’t get scratched. Add to that the fact that CD-R disks go for pennies a piece these days and you’re on to a winner. Of course, if I were going to operate that way I would want to use CD-RW disks, which are a little bit more expensive, but certainly within my reach. The problem with this approach is that I would have to install a CD Burner in the computer at work. It would certainly be possible for me to do, given that I’m the one who maintains that machine anyway, but it violates my own rule about unnecessary configuration changes. The change would have to be classed as unnecessary because it would be done for my convenience, not for work’s benefit.
Another option would be to make use of one of the new USB storage devices. They go under a variety of names. I’ve heard them called Media Keys, Micro Vaults, and Slim Drives, among others. Basically what they are is a really tiny hard drive in a really tiny casing which hooks up to the USB ports on your computer. Future Shop has a 64Mb drive from Pine Technologies listed for about $50. The price is right, it provides more than enough storage for what I need it to do and the size and form factor are such that I can just throw it into my bag every day and forget about it. The problem with this approach is that the USB ports on the computer at work are at the back of the computer, and the computer is locked away in a cupboard, so in order for this to be truly convenient I would have to install a USB hub to give me easy access to the USB ports. I would also have to do this at home, because the way things are set up now getting access to anything on the back of Old Nemesis is a real pain in the ass.
I have an old 100Mb Zip Drive hooked up to Old Nemesis and several Zip disks which are being used for a variety of backup chores. I suppose I could just unhook that every day and take it to work with me, but that’s a pain in the ass. It would be far easier for me to just get another drive and hook it up at work. There are 100Mb parallel Zip Drives advertised in the Bargain Finder for between $20 and $50, so it’s not that expensive and it would make use of technology that I already have. But again that gets us into the Unnecessary Configuration Changes arguments.
Of course, the easiest and most expensive thing for me to do would be to get a new hard drive, throw it in a USB enclosure and carry that around with me every day. Given the size and inexpensiveness of modern hard drives this would give me essentially unlimited storage and the whole setup would cost a little under $500. The problem is that the enclosures are big and bulky and not very portable. This is another pain in the ass.
I could solve the whole thing right now by going out and buying a used notebook. That would give me a second computer to work with and I could easily transfer files back and forth between machines using serial and parallel port connections. But even used notebook computers are expensive, these days.
I imagine what I’ll probably end up doing is picking up another 100Mb parallel Zip dive and installing that at work. I can probably justify doing it to myself on the grounds that it does provide a stable means of backup for the shop and doesn’t require me to take the computer out of service for more than five minutes or so to install it, versus the near 30 minutes to install a CD burner. I’ve been looking around for 100Mb IDE zip drives, but you can’t get them anymore. You can get the 250Mb drives with IDE connections, but you can’t get the 100’s anymore. And the 250’s cost more money than I really want to invest in this endeavor.
Ah, well, that’s what I get for doing what I do.
I’ve probably missed a few alternatives or a few arguments along the way. Anyone who has anything to contribute I will be happy to listen.
From Denise Chrapko via E-Mail:
Can't e-mail it to yourself, or use one of those "online hard drives" where you get 5mb of free disk space... there are several, but I know of... http://www.xdrive.com/ You also have a website...can't you just setup a spot to drop/pickup files for yourself? Just some ideas... D
From Jeff Ruysenaars via E-Mail:
Ya,
It's a drag when the floppy develops an error. You could try to run a defrag on the floppy (or that other Norton utility - now windows -* scandisk) to make the floppy readable again.
Here are your two cheapest options -
Email to yourself from work. OK, no net connection then -
Get another floppy disk! Maybe even a NEW one!! If the drives themselves are old/dirty, they are replaceable for $20± each. Why re-invent the wheel? You may try writing the doc file to floppy in a zipped or compressed archive format. This has helped me in failing system in the past.
Other than that, the USB storage key would/should be really good with respect to bulletproof storage and retrieval. Too bad that last week I gave away two (yes 2) USB hubs now that I have no use for them.
Damn!