I don’t blog much about technology anymore, but here is a good tip for people who are concerned about their data. Since USB drives are very inexpensive now, and all newer computers can boot from a USB drive, why not combine your backup data with an operating system?
What I do is have a 1G USB key plugged into my computer. I back up all of my personal files and bookmarks (less than 50mb, scarily enough, I use IMAP for my e-mail) to a USB drive with Mandriva Linux USB edition installed. There are many USB Linux distributions out there, DSL and Knoppix are others. Google it. This way, if a hard drive fails, just change my boot order, and I have a working machine with my data until I can purchase a new hard drive. The performance under USB is excellent, equal to or better than my hard drives. You won’t have your 25,000 song music collection, but you will have a working computer that can do 99% of what you need to do right now. I think you can do this with Windows XP as well, but it is of little interest to me. I think this is also a good tip for business travelers. Why worry about a delicate laptop or if a client’s computer has all the software you need installed? Load it all on a USB key and keep it on your key chain. Enough geekdom for now. Back to collecting watches.