Digital Bits Technology Column QnA

Question:

I have a 2GB USB drive, keychain lighter style, that I want to use to backup data.  It shows up under Control Panel > Administrative > Disk Management.  From there, under Properties > Tools, I can backup everything in My Documents.  That’s the only way I can backup annything.  From there, I don’t know how to retrieve anything from it.  I can’t even display what’s in it other than the My Documents icon.  If I click on that, the computer just asks if I want to back that up again.

The USB drive doesn’t have an icon of its own, and it doesn’t show up as Drive F under Portable Storage Devices in My Computer.

I did, however, put a folder for it in the Send To menu so hopefully I could backup individual applications and documents.  But there doesn’t seem to be a path from Send To to the USB drive.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do other than throw the thing away.

Answer:

I’d strongly recommend getting a USB hard drive for backup purposes, rather than using a keychain USB drive like you wrote about. It will come with its own backup software, allowing you to back up what you need, and be able to recover it easily. I recommend the Maxtor drives, $50-$150. The backup software they come with is easy to set up and use.

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