Flash Drives
 

I cannot say enough good things about them. Prism99 was asking about preserving pictures in another post.

I have several with music, videos, the Bible, (all of it), my mother's genealogy, my father's diaries from Pearl Harbor, greeting cards I've shared with Jim, birth certificates, tax records, and quite a few other things. I also have one devoted entirely to my quilting stuff. If you live in an area where you have the occasional tornado, wild fire, or earthquake, it may be a very good idea to have all this information on a flash drive in your purse at all times.

Definitely a good idea to back up on flash drives. I'd be wacky enough though that I'd have to have a dedicated one for each subject matter!

I love flash drives too! They are handy and easy to use. It never hurts to have backup!

Back when I had a new computer built to my specs, I asked to a 2nd hard drive to be installed just for all my files such as quilt designs, embroidery designs, statements, etc. This way if my computer crashes, my files are safe on another hard drive. Sure I can't get to them while its crashed but I haven't lost them either. I also have an external hard drive that I use for backup. Depending on how often these folders are added to will designate how often they get backed up. My quilt and embroidery folders get backed up weekly, jigsaw puzzle folder every 2 weeks and so on. Have another extra external hard drive in case I know my computer is going into the shop and I copy the folders onto this hard drive to use on my laptop. I've had a crash in the past and had a shop retrieve my files. My embroidery files came back looking like confetti, like someone took scissors to it and then tried to put it back together again. Not pretty!!!!

I use an external hard drive, but the flash drives are great for separating things out. I like all the cute designs too.

DH has 6 flash drives in his pockets. I have no idea how he keeps track of what is on each. How do you keep track of them. My one friend takes a photo of each with her phone and labels them like that. She has them in a pouch.

In his pockets....CIA, FBI,.....?.my pockets have tissues that sometimes I forget to take out at laundry time..then I have washed confetti!
Btw...I do have few flash drives...is that the same as thumb drives....in the desk ..but they are empty....never tried to use.....

I made a envelope -each is slid into its own slot and I carry them in my purse. I had an electrical fire last year - it was the garage-a total loss. But my brother had his 'man cave' out there -computer tv musical equip and guitars all was lost. So that set in a panic about things that can not be replaced. So my son put every thing on usb's . And showed me how to do it myself. I took a piece of masking tape to label each. Legal=important paper work titles-ins-my will etc... If some one has to access them because I can't the first thing they will see is my name and then my family's names and phone numbers.

Flash drives are great; just remember to put what you have on a flash drive on a disc just in case .... Or better yet a fire proof chest on both ..

Mine are color coded with little key chain rings and stuff like that. My quilting on has a key chain with a spool of thread. Also, some of the drives themselves are different colors I have what's on them written on a small list.

I finally bought an external hard drive and back up my whole computer on a regular basis. I also use the cloud, Apple and Amazon. Both free for 5 gb and easily accessible.

I know what flash drives are but not how to get "thing" from the computer to them. Can someone give me any directions because I would love to put all my MSQ tutes on one drive. Do you just plug them into your computer and then what?

I know, how sad am I but I'm lucky I still know how to turn my computer on to read email :-)

Hi, Roberta. When you plug a new flash drive into a computer, it will take a little minute to recognize it. Then you can right click on something, a picture, music or whatever and when the window comes up you will see a line that says "send to". At that point you pick "Removable Disk E" (or some letter). Click on that and it will go to the flash drive. It is a handy way to keep stuff. You will love it.

Sounds so easy even I can do this Boston 1954. From one "almost" Bostonian (Lynn here) to another, thank you.

when a computer dies, which they do, my son usually retrieves the hard drive, puts it in a case, and it is a portable hard drive with everything I had still there and accessible. I have several now. Gotta take some time and organize them one day, but it is a great way to keep the info. It is rarely the hard drive that crashes, but a mother board or some such. He keeps em humming

Ohhh, please be careful carrying a lot of personal data around on flash drives!! If they get stolen, there goes all your private info. Use password protection, and know that even that is not all that secure and can be pretty easily hacked by following instructions online. Might be better to make a couple sets of copies and place those copies with trusted friends/family to store in their homes for you, or (even better) in a safe deposit box.

I have an external drive that runs a backup from my PC every night. DH has one on his main PC doing nightly backups as well, and then we have an "extra" PC on the network that pulls backups from both external drives once a week. Then about once a year or so we do a full backup of everything onto a drive we keep at my cousin's house - we figure odds are very low that we'll BOTH have house fires the same day. Setting up the network backup was kind of complicated but setting up the backup to the external drive was EXTREMELY easy - the drive comes with software specifically for that purpose so you just decide on a schedule and pick the folders you want backed up and you're done.

Kind of a funny story...I found a flash drive in the parking lot at work. I'm in IT, so I took it to our "uh oh" PC to plug it in to see if we could figure out who it belonged to (this PC is off network, so if this drive was full of viruses it couldn't infect anything important) and it turned out to be a lot of those nude-pregnancy-boudoir style photos of my coworker and his wife! It was really awkward, as I had my supervisor with me to view the files. (They were "tasteful", but still...) We flipped a coin to see who had to go give it back and I lost. I just handed it to him and said, "Um...it appears that this belongs to you." He turned red...I turned red....and we never spoke of it again. LOL So watch those thumb drives, and use passwords!!! LOL

I label my embroidery ones with a label maker, ITH, FSL, applique

I use flash drives for everything important. I have two sets, and when I go to see my Mom twice a year I take the new one and give it to her so there is always a back up in another state in case I had a disaster at my home and lost everything.

Yes, such as easy way of backing up important files. They keep making them so they hold more data each year.