WD My Book 500GB Home Edition: backup plan

Taxes came back!! Sweet! After discussing with the wife why it might be good to backup her 20,000+ pics, I was given the okay. Yes it's over 20 Thousand pictures. Thank God for digital. I think we still have about 100 rolls of film to develop before they die, but that's another dilemma. This is how I solved my current dilemma.

Introducing the Western Digital My Book Home Edition. It's an external Hard Drive. A pretty good one. It's technically a  500GB SATA drive. We purchased it from Costco for $129.  It comes with some software. A program called WD anywhere backup, which I found less than useful. It didn't have enough features for me and my circumstances. It also comes with some Google software you could just download from the net. Again basically useless.

My current configuration is a 36GB OS drive and a 160GB data drive. I don't save anything to the OS drive, it's just the OS and programs. All data goes to the Data drive so I don't have to worry about my data when I need to do major config changes to the OS. The My Book comes pre-formatted to FAT 32, so that was a problem. Solution= reformat it to NTFS. I chose to use Windows XP pro backup utility. First I did a backup of the DATA drive and then I used the utility to do incremental backups daily at 10 pm.

So nothing fancy. Will it work, I believe so. Should I have a backup plan offsite, probably.  Wish me luck, now back to that College Algebra.

CES in Las Vegas Hoot, Hoot!

Well CES is going on in Las Vegas right now. I asked my boss if they would send me next year.

"Send the hardware boys," she exclaimed, "We do software."

"Curses!$%#" and I thought I might get a chance to stay at the Hooters Casino courtesy of work. Oh well that's life.

Danes 1 GB jumpdrive

I lost my Crucial 256 MB jumpdrive last week. It drove me nuts! I think it might have been stolen. So it was off to the store to get a new one. Some how I ended up in Target, Jackpot!

I really only had 2 requirements.

1. It had to be at least a Gig.
2. It needed to be cheap, $.

Well, this one definitely fit the bill. It's a Dane-Elec 1 GB USB 2.0 Drive. It was regularly $49.99, when I walked in it was on sale for $17.99! You can't beat that. So far so good. I like the USB 2.0. FAST!!
Here's one thing that I have always found interesting. It is a 1 GB drive. However it really has 965 MB, not a 1000 MB. I have to admit though there are 1012.486 bytes available.

I guess Math will never be my strong suit.

So my review. It's awesome.
I love it.
What do you like to use for portable storage?

USB Batteries

These are really pretty cool. Rechargeable batteries have been around for awhile, but these have a nice twist. Some engineer got pretty clever on this one. He has tapped into one of the useful features of the grand USB port. It's power supplication. That's right! He has incorporated the charger into the battery.

Here is the low down on these Badboys. When it is time to recharge, you just pop the battery top to expose the male USB connector. You don't have to remember  where the charger is, just find an available USB port. They are everywhere today; laptop, desktop,or USB hub. 

You can purchase them from ThinkGeek.com and thanks go out to Techzi.  

The Electricity Flows at CES

This has always been cool. When I was a kid I wanted one of these so bad. CNET has an article up on the new Taser C2, a stungun for everyone. Didn't you want to ZAP your big brother with 50 volts?! Well there are some practical uses. Here are the specs:

• 15 foot range.
• lithium powere magazine.
• integrated LED light to improve aim.
• trigger safety cover.
• available in 4 colors: black, silver, pink and "electric" blue.

What they have done is removed some of the police taser features. So what you won't get:

• Taser cam interface (you can't record your bro' writhing in pain.)
• dataport management
• digital display

Is it worth the $299 pricetag? That will be based on your personal situation. Just to have as a toy? Probably not.

Star Wars USB Darth Vader

These are pretty cool. Mimoco has just announced they are releasing in 2007 Star Wars themed jumpdrives. They are going to be available in a few different sizes. They will have a 1 GB, 2 GB, and a 4 GB. The news available now at the Star Wars Shop is that this Darth Vader in the 1 GB is going to sell for $79.95. That's a little steep for me since you can get a 2 GB at TigerDirect.com for $39.99.

I first heard about these at TechEblog. Its a really cool site with some of the best up to the minute information.

I have to admit I am some what of a Star Wars freak. So I hope Mimoco releases a bunch more. This series of four is labeled as Series 1. So that is promising. Be sure to check out their contest where you could possibly win all four.