Latest additions to my study include some Yamaha YST MS50 2.1 speakers for my PC and a Maxtor 300GB USB/Firewire external HDD.
After some research I chose the Yamaha speakers – I love Yamaha gear, and they make some of the best subwoofers on the market. It’s not the loudest system out there (although the subwoofer is very powerful), but the quality is excellent and I’m very happy with it. It’s nice having an additional line input on the back of one of the speakers to be able to attach a second device like a walkman or MP3 player.
The external HDD I will be using as a backup device – it’s one of Maxtor’s “one touch” devices, with a button on the front that can be programmed to run a backup program or any other program of your choice.
I have a reasonably sophisticated daily/weekly/monthly backup strategy (it sounds complex, but it’s really quite simple – I’ll explain it in full in another post sometime), and all my backup files are stored on a secondary hard drive on my main PC (includes backups from Leanne’s PC and my laptop as well).
I have the “one touch” button set to move all the backup files from my PC onto the external drive – a simple batch file that creates a directory with todays date and moves the files into it.
I leave the drive turned off most of the time and only turn it on every so often to move the backup files. My argument is that by having it offline most of the time it is less likely to fail from seized bearings or be susceptible to virus activity.
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