Thumb drives/flash drives/USB drives, whatever you call them, they are great. They’re small, they hold lots of data, and they make it so easy to transport work from the office to home (and elsewhere) and vice versa. But, like any other drive, they can break or other things can happen.
Like your son decides to delete all of the data on an old thumb drive, but it turns out he did it on the one you use for work. (Of course, this is a hypothetical (sic).)
Anyway, picture your reaction as you walk by and witness your data waving goodbye. And remember, files deleted from thumb drives, just like those on servers, are gone forever; they don’t make it to the recycle bin.
What do you do? Backup your thumb drive! Add it to the list of locations you backup daily (you do, of course, backup daily, right?) and then do it. I do now!
Also, if you do accidentally delete information, there’s a nifty program — Active Undelete — that scans your drive and can restore those “lost” files. It’s only $39.95, and the person in the hypothetical found it very handy. You can buy it from www.active-undelete.com.
