Post by Ben Fullerton: USB drives are lame.
: Be a real man and use a screwdriver to open your PC and connect a real
: hard drive to your PC.
I already have two internal hard drives, a CD burner, and an
adapter rack for quick change drawer mounted (internal
connection) hard drives - so there is no room for another
using the standard installation!
Your existing drives are too small.
The answer is to buy one or two larger drives and clone your existing
drives to them.
Problem solved. No need for USB drive.
Post by Ben FullertonExperts tell me that FLASH CARDS are not reliable for long
term storage
When did we start talking about flash memory?
Flash memory is slow and expensive and it does wear out (it has a
limited lifespan when it comes to over-writing).
Post by Ben Fullertonand I find the bigger hard drives to be both cumbersome
and lack security - as they are always 'connected' and
available to any intelligent hacker.
You are nuts. If you are using windows 98 (and I assume you are), then
you should be aware that win-98 is much LESS vulnerable to remote access
and internet "remote control" compared to win2k, XP, or any NT-based OS.
If you have this constant security fear, then you have bigger problems
than dealing with USB drives.
Post by Ben FullertonThe security of USB devices (just "eject" the link and pull
the connector) proves to be much more secure and satisfactory.
SATA drives are hot swappable and can be connected and disconnected to a
system just as easily.
Post by Ben Fullerton..... but maybe you do not understand how to keep private data
absolutely secure [disconnect it before making a connection to
the internet] or do not care who reads your private records.
You are delusional. Your private records are of absolutely no
importance to anyone else.
If you fear so much for the security of your data, then why do you allow
your PC to be connected to the internet?
Your fears are over-blown.
Even the most sophisticated trojan or bot-software is not capable of
scanning the files on a PC and be able to detect useful information
beyond recognizing e-mail addresses.
User names and passwords are only detectible via key-logging.
If you had your entire financial portfolio in an excel spreadsheet,
including account numbers and financial institutions, a trojan would not
be able to understand the information in the file and communicate it to
a bot-master.