Wednesday Tech Tip

Okay, I am starting a new recurring (weekly) post. We are going to Call it Wednesday Tech Tip. The wednesday tech tip can be something i find useful or an answer to someone's question. To submit a question for WTT, simply drop me an email (peter@peterwebber.net). Today's tip is a result of a malfunctioning Maxtor External Hard Drive. Tony Morgan's Blog Chronicals his heartache with this drive. The below tip is also available in tony's post under comments
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Using a Standard Internal Computer Hard Drive as an External Backup Drive
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Any internal Hard drive can be used as an external drive with a simple case that will cost you less than 30$

for example, this 100$ 320gb drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392

Insert it into this $20 External USB Enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155515

and you've built your own external backup drove for $125 plus maybe $10 for shipping.


now what about software you ask? Easy, for a simple backup of your Entire Main Hard Drive (we'll call it C:) to your backup drive (we'll call it E:) the DOS (will work in XP too!!) command is
xcopy C:\*.* E:\*.* /c /h /e /r /k /y
this can be automated by creating a 'batch file' (using notepad.exe, type that text and save as 'backup.bat') once you have your batch file, use windows' built in scheduler to run the batch every day/week/month/year (whenever you want).

your files will appear on the backup drive EXACTLY the SAME as the files on your main drive.