RE: newer backup methods was: Accidentally Lost Data

John,

USB devices have identifiers and different device types. I have a Vista
loaner we've been playing with at work. The backup program purposely
does not allow backups to USB flash drives.

From the help:

"When I'm using the Back Up Files wizard, why don't I see the location
that I want to back up to when I'm choosing where to save my backup?
"* The location is a USB flash drive. You can't save backups to a flash
drive."

Steve may be right, and Vista wants to support on-the-fly restore from
previous backups (a la Leopard).

This is generally for home users; corporate users would probably use
Veritas or another backup solution to save client desktop information.

Loyd Goodbar
Senior programmer/analyst
BorgWarner
TS Water Valley
662-473-5713

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jones, John (US)
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 13:17
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: newer backup methods was: Accidentally Lost Data

Vista: A USB drive is a USB drive.  Why should it matter at all if the
drive is solid state or platter-based?  Either way you can partition
them, format as FAT32 or NTFS, and do whatever else you'd care to do.

16GB Flash drives are out and are under $150 (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233042 ).
That's plenty for a modest OS + apps + My Documents set up.  Or just My
Docs for incremental/differential backups.

I'm not trying to argue here; you may well be right about MS' approach.
IMO, though, there's no functional difference and MS shouldn't be
dictating what storage media customers use.