An INTROduction to Lists of
|
|
Bargain USB 'Hard-Drives' : Around 2013-2014, the price of rotating Hard-Drives for digital data storage were around $60 per 500 GigaBytes --- in other words, about $1.20 for 10 GB. Prices went up to about $100 for 500 Gigabytes after floods in Thailand (in 2013) wiped out many disk drive manufacturing facilities. By mid-2014, prices were back around $60 per 500 Gigabytes. Per-gigabyte prices for rotating disk-drives do not seem to be falling as fast as prices for solid-state storage, such as USB 'sticks'. This may auger well for solid-state disk becoming price-competitive with rotating disk-platters around 2019 or so. (The question remains, in 2014, as to whether the reliability and life-times of solid-state digital storage, for high-input/output applications, will become competitive with rotating disk platters.) I discuss an issue of unwanted software installed in an unremovable 'virtual CD' partition on some models of these drives on this External Disk Drives page (file backup issues). It used to be the case (before 2014) that you could find some USB disk drives, in local stores such as Walmart and Target and BestBuy, without backup software on them --- such as the Seagate 'Expansion' disk drives (NOT 'Expansion-plus') and the Western Digital 'Elements' disk drives. But around 2014 those 'empty' disk drives disappeared from store shelves and all you can find are drives with backup software installed. And, as I have documented on the External Disk Drives page (file backup issues) page, some of those drives, like Western Digital drives, have the backup software installed in an unremovable 'virtual CD' partition on the drive. On the web page link above, I have documented the frustration of many people with that unremovable backup software. It is especially frustrating to many people because the backup software is so crude and inflexible as to be unusable to those people who know there are much better backup software options available. (If you use this software, you had better be ready to have your computer tied up while the backup software is backing up many thousands of files that do not really need to be backed up.) The bottom line is that I will never buy storage drives with backup software pre-installed. It appears that Seagate still sells 'Expansion' drives without backup software on those drives --- BUT those drives are (usually) only available via the internet. In 2015, I am faced with the fact that I can only get the kind of USB disk drive I like (unencumbered by useless, obnoxiously-unremovable backup software) by ordering via the internet. Then I will use 'rsync' to backup my home directory as I describe on this 'rsync' backup scripts page --- after running a specifically-tailored 'file cleanup' script, to avoid backing up hundreds of files that do not need to be backed up. |
|
Bottom of this
To return to a previously visited web page location, click on the
Back button of your web browser, a sufficient number of times.
OR, use the History-list option of your web browser.
< Go to Top of Page, above. >
|