Why I favor online data back up methods over flash drives

Hi again all!

So, after 2 hard drive crashes and Dell sending me a new drive (free under warranty! thank you for your prompt response, all you wonderful people at Dell) I am now able to upload my backlog of blog entries. Expect to see all those things I been talking about posting with all of you since early October pop up in the next few days. :)

After some discussion on this topic in class, I would now like to post my opinion on why I don't trust flash drives as back up storage devices. It's because I've had them stolen, lost on loan, and erased by computer error. The computer error is what did it for me.

My husband, who was much better versed than I in security years ago, warned me not to use flash drives as the standard backup device. When you tote around the contents of your computer, you have to worry what's on that device--your name? Copies of bank statements? A list of (even encrypted) passwords? Any other personally identifying information? Anyone else's identifiers, like their grades or private college papers? --It's one thing to put these items on an external hard drive that hangs out in your office, but to keep this information in your pocket or purse is quite another. Things do get lost, and there's no guarantee that the person who finds it will return it. Chances are they need to look at the drive to even figure out who you are, unless you've printed your information on the tiny exterior.

I had a drive stolen out from a computer station on a college campus once, stepping away for 5 minutes to see something a friend wanted to show me on her screen. I lost the 3 pages of term paper that I had been working on, not to mention the 20-30 other copies of documents that were on there. Thereafter I had to follow up with professors to warn them that if suspiciously familiar term papers started cropping up, it wasn't because I had sold them on the black market. That was fun. People get up and forget their flash drives all the time, too, and it's really a shame these tiny and easily lost or forgotten devices don't come with a built-in password protection program.

The one time I had a drive erased, it wasn't a school paper (thank goodness, right? --not so much). It was a novel I was writing. Picture this: I'm 50 pages into writing the 4th book in a planned 7 book series, cruising along and happy as a lark with my progress. I've forgotten some mundane detail of something and need to recheck my details in the previous book. I pull it up on my flash drive and open the document, check the details, fix a misspelling, and go to close. Word asks me if I want to save the changes, so I click yes--and then my virus software pops open and the save freezes. There's been an error--"Continue with save?" I click cancel, it was only one misspelling, and I don't want to tie up the RAM if the virus software needs it. Well, when I clicked cancel, my virus software (it's a mainstream brand offered by one of the largest PC providers out there) scrubs my flash drive of the open file. Book 3, gone. Because it was in save and linked to the backup copies on the flash drive it scrubbed those too. Not even a readable temp file in sight.

It could be said it's bad to keep your primary copies on a flash drive, and it was totally my fault in that case that there were no back up copies. I had become used to the convenience of having my work wherever I was, so I just worked my primaries off the flash drive (please, do not ever, ever fall to this temptation). But flash drives are not computers. They do break easily, and they are not for primary storage.

Now I use online back up methods. They go wherever the internet is (which, let's face it, is anywhere there is a computer anymore). They are password protected, and the providing agent makes the back up copies for you--sometimes in triplicate or more. Many even offer off-line desktop versions. Most of them are 100% free. And, it removes the risk that you will lose the drive or have it stolen.

So maybe online back ups are not for everyone; neither are flash drives. Anyways, those are my thoughts on why I do not use flash drives for large scale storage and back-ups.