Sinewsworn Loc: Port Orchard, WA

In Uncle Sugar's Flying Circus (USAF) in the late 1960s we had "disk drives" where the platters were 10.5" across. Usually stacked in a set of seven. Housed in what looked like a washing machine, they provided video back-up of the North American Air Defense picture. 500kb I believe. Very fast, though.
Worked with the AN/FYQ-7 computer-largest ever built and used. Each Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Direction Center had two- Bonnie and Clyde. Tubes the size of your head. One the Q-7s from Fort Lee Virginia is in the Smithsonian.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

I just read the posting talking about the 32GB flashdrive as also being referred to as a 2TB drive. The 2TB is outright BS and I can only assume that it has been done deliberately to try and suck in the ignorant or the seller has absolutely no idea what he/she is talking about. I have never read as much unadulterated BS in my life.
I would need a 20TB flashdrive to hold all my backups so will have to pass on this as being an option.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

Sorry, I may not have been very clear.
I have an 8TB drive with a RAID1 configuration I copy to with Carbon Copy Cloner (MAC only app). This drive remains in-house.

Then I have a 2TB drive that I back up to also and that one I store off-site like in my man shed or garage.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Sounds like you have a plan! Primary copy, backup copy and off-site DR copy.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

After you digest the reply’s here, you don’t have a backup scheme unless you test it. Just change the name of the path to your originals and actually try restoring them from the backup. Restoring after an actual failure in an adrenaline rich composure may not go well.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Absolutely! Your backup is only as good as your ability to actually restore the files, and the time to test your system is NOT after your primary storage fails. Even with enterprise level backup SW, a (hopefully small) percentage of restores fail, and this causes extreme consternation in the IT staff and CIO while everyone in the department awaits the outcome (because they can’t work without their data).

Dean Sturgis

I had a USB drive at broke I pulled the outer case off. My son saw a broken trace between the connector and the chip, he was able to re solder it with very fine soldering equipment. He worked in computer hardware development. I however only trusted the repair long enough to get the files off the device.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

A 2 TB flash drive for $9, from eBay, just didn't appear to be legit. I never buy SD cards from eBay either. Other items are OK.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Let me point out that T is not far away from G on the keyboard. As a person who occasionally fat-fingers the keyboard, it's entirely possible that the item could be a 2GB flash drive, for which $9 is not an unreasonable price.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Unfortunately, there are many listings that say the same thing...a 2 TB thumb drive...

I posted a link about a scam. How a 32 Tb thumb drive was altered to report it was a 2 Tb drive, but upon use, as you store above 32 go it simply overwrites the files already on the drive.

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-630812-2.html#10920792


You can find dirt cheap 2 TB thumb drives on Amazon also...I would not spend 1.00 for one of them either :)

PGHphoto Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I am guessing their rational is that for document storage, the files are compressed. With a really poor drive architecture that uses very large blocks its possible that compression can save a huge amount of space with plain text files - but even then, its doubtful that the compression ratio would be 98.4% !!!!

edellington

I use the Carbonite cloud service that works very well in the background. www.carbonite.com

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I never used flash drives for storage, nor would I ever, but I back up regularly ( I have 15 TB of storage)!

Bison Bud

While I would not use a USB Flash drive for my primary or especially for my only backup, I do feel that they are acceptable for extra or reserve backups and have no qualms about using them in that capacity. While there is a possibility of failure without recovery, I know of no technical reason why data stored on one shouldn't last for years and I think they are an ideal storage medium for multiple backups to be stored off site. Besides, a typical platter type hard drive has moving parts that are somewhat prone to failure and I've lost more than one over the years. Yes, there is still a chance of recovery, but it's not cheap and having a flash drive or three with that same data can really save the day in event of failure. Frankly, I have yet to lose data on a flash drive although I did have one fail when I tried to reformat it. Afterward, it would not read, write, or reformat again so I don't do that anymore. Since I was doing a reformat, I expected to lose the files, so the only harm done was the loss of a $6.00 flash drive. Seems reasonable to me! Frankly, there is no perfect solution to backup storage short of having multiple copies stored in multiple places and flash drives can be a reasonable alternative that allows one to have several copies stored in different locations. The only real disadvantage I know of is that they do have limited storage and are rather slow, but considering the cost savings, I can deal with that. Works for me, but your mileage may vary.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Flash drives are fine for backup.
Flash drives are not suitable for archival storage.

There's a difference in my opinion between backup and archives.

Backup is used for files that you expect to use in the near future. "Near future" is subjective and could mean within a couple years.

Archives are used for files that you are consigning to history. They are important to keep, but you don't expect to need them for a long time.