I can back up my data with one hand tied behind my back

When buying a new hard drive enclosure, I thought I would get one which has a one-button backup capability. I opted for Z-Disc (made by Cintre USA) which I found on the Tiger Direct website.

When I received the hard drive, I had a hard time getting it to work, though. I received it while in Florida, along with a new 300GB Seagate hard drive. I had also brought along to Florida an older HD enclosure and an older HD (the Western Digital hard drive which failed on me!!). Anyway, I could get the old enclosure to work with the new Seagate HD, but I could not get the new enclosure to work with the new HD. Therefore, I ended up taking both the new enclosure and the new HD back to Dallas. (I had wanted to leave the old HD in Florida, which actually, I did... In the trash!) I wasn't sure if the problem with the new enclosure was that it had limited support for larger HDs, and since I had no other HD available, I could not verify whether it was working or not.

Anyway, when I got back to Dallas, I still could not get the new enclosure to work, even with smaller HDs. However, I did figure out that the problem was that the IDE cable was plugged in improperly on the enclosure side. So much for quality control! The IDE cable was only plugged into half the pins. Fortunately, this did not damage the enclosure and once I plugged it in properly, it was working. I had a hard time getting the one-button to work consistently, but I also found it was due to it another cable not being plugged in all the way. (I am not sure if I had caused that problem or not.)

Anyway, everything now seems to work well. With the backup utility, you can specify multiple "tasks" for backup. That is, each task is a source/target pair, so you can backup as many directories as you want. In addition, you can specify other options, like if you simply want to backup or want to synch. I have not verified how well the synching works. Hopefully, it works well because that is the type of backup Kyoko prefers.

Anyway, since this enclosure does not cost any more than other enclosures, then I think this is a good choice. There is one strange behavior if I plug in the enclosure into the computer when it is turned on, then the device is not recognized. Therefore, I have to plug the device in first, and then turn the device on.

However, I am intrigued by the Netgear SC101 network storage device. I have heard it is slow, though, but perhaps for my needs, that is not a problem. It does look like a toaster, though. It would be cuter if they would give it ears and a tail.

Update: Hmmm, I hear strange noises out of the Z-Disc external hard drive enclosure. It sort of sounds like something out of an old science fiction movie. I was thinking it was the hard drive causing this sound (ie, another WD hard drive failure) but when I put the hard drive in a different hard drive enclosure, it does not make funny noises anymore.

Update:Unfortunately the backup software provided was too limiting. Kyoko wanted the capability to have the backup to be a mirror of selected folders, meaning that if she deletes a file, it would be deleted on the backup. No such luck with the provided software. I found that Microsoft provides SyncToy as freeware which does provide such a capability, so it makes more sense to go to the old way of backing up on a network computer, but this time using SyncToy.