Sunday 23 August 2009

USB Flash Disk Alert and General Backup Tips

I've lost a few replaceable files when I took out a USB flash disk too soon and found the disk was corrupt, had no files listed, and had to be reformatted.

The solution: I worked out that when you right-click the USB drive in My Computer and click 'Eject', then the name changes to 'Removeable Drive'. Then you must count FIVE seconds before removal. This gives the USB disk time to save all data. When I practise this, I have lost no data in a while.

Perhaps equally obvious: Buy 2 identical flash disks and copy 1 to the other once a week, then if one flash disk gets corrupted, you only lose a bit of data.

Tomorrow, I will write a tutorial for Total Commander on how to synchronise one disk to the other - without having to re-copy all the data!

Postscript: One way to be absolutely sure is to wait for the USB drive's LED/light to stop flashing and go dark. But always wait a few seconds AFTER it going dark to avoid data corruption.

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