Oh My!

For some reason I have been lulled into a state of inactivity. I had assumed that not much was happening with my new house. Frisco has had quite a bit of bad weather. This morning I received an email from the construction superintendent that said they are framing the house this week. That means the slab has been poured. Tanner had been out of town and had not sent me the news. I better get busy. I may be moving earlier than I had planned.

 

Yesterday morning I read an article in the New York Times Technology Section about computer backups. I used to back up my computer every week. Since I got a digital camera and an iPod it has become a daunting task to back up my data to CD's. It takes forever. I broke down and ordered an external hard drive yesterday. My computer is four years old this month. I am hoping it lasts until next year when Windows Vista has been released and has a few months to get the worst bugs fixed. My computer has the older and slower 1.1 USB ports. It also has an i1394 adapter. This adapter is also known as firewire. The external hard drive that I ordered can use USB or firewire. I have never used the i1394 adapter. I checked Windows device manager. The i1394 adapter in my computer is recognized and does not have any problems.

 

The Seagate external drive that I ordered has it own power supply. My i1394 port does not supply power. The Seagate drive comes with a 6 pin i1394 cable. My computer has a 4 pin port. I realized I needed to buy a cable after I had placed the order with Buy.com. I had a hard time figuring out what kind of cable to order. I thought I could just go to the local Best Buy or Circuit City and buy one. After I checked prices I found that Amazon.com had the cable I needed for one-third the price that the local stores wanted. Then I had to figure out a few more things to add to my Amazon.com order in order to get free shipping. Got to have that free shipping.

 

The new hard drive comes with backup software. Seagate claims that after the backup program is configured you can backup your computer by pushing one button on the drive. I will believe it when I see it. I am wondering if I can install the backup software on the external drive and save the space on my computer's internal drive. I am also thinking that the external hard drive can be connected to the new computer when I buy it and make the transfer of files from my old computer much easier.