Tip O'Tex Computer Club

April 2005 Newsletter

USB Hard Drives

Times have changed. We used to back our files up to a Floppy (A) drive - now most computers come without an A drive at all. Sometimes you can have one added at the factory, but if you buy one in a store the chances are that it will not have one. Laptop computers can't even get one installed.

There are USB external A drives and there are USB hard drives. The external A drives still have the same capacity as the internal floppy drives. But the good news is that the USB hard drives have a MUCH larger capacity. In fact, you can't find one in stores with less than 128 MB - and usually 256 MB is the smallest.

There is a variety of names for these little beauties.... Flashdrive - Memory Stick - USB Stick - Thumb drive, etc. If you go to a store to buy one, they'll know what you mean, no matter what wording you use.

If you haven't gotten a USB hard drive yet, it's something you really need to think about. A lot of computers that were purchased when XP first came out are almost ready for replacement, and most of them didn't have A drives, although they did usually come with CD/RW that was used for backups. And you'll want to copy some (in some cases, a LOT) of files over to the new one.

You may find that files copied to a CD/R or CD/RW have "read only" properties. That means that when you restore those files, whether to the same computer or to a new one, you have to reset those properties in order to be able to make changes. This is really a problem when trying to copy the mail in Outlook Express from an old computer to a new one, because there are so many folders. Using a USB hard drive for backups doesn't seem to have that same problem.

Windows 98 requires the installation of drivers, but Windows XP will recognize the drive as soon as it is plugged into the computer. After you plug in the USB drive, you will see the drive appear as a new icon when you click on My Computer. To copy or move files, you simply drag them from your desktop to the hard drive or vise versa, or use the Send to: function from a RIGHTclick.

Maintenance

Maintenance is different with Windows XP, in that you don't need to run Scandisk. In fact if you try to run it, you'll be told that it can't be done, but if you want, it can run the next time you start the computer. If Windows decides you NEED to run Scandisk, it'll run all by itself when you boot up. You'll get a light blue screen, which is NOT what we used to call the "Blue Screen of Death" - and usually once you let the blue screen run a scan, any errors should be corrected.