Backups

I thought the new DVD RW drives that could burn double layer disks would be great so I bought one not long after they came out. I must of spent 129 or so on it. Since then I have bought 2 more. Each one was cheaper then the last one. Now they have them for less then 50. As you know the double layer DVD RW media is not cheap so I have not burned many of those. The other day I saw some double layer DVD+R or was it –R disk for 30 USD for 25 disks so the prices have came down a lot. But the new drives all burn and write everything. What I did with the last one is install it in 5.25 inch USB 2.0 / Firewire box. The box costs about 50 USD I think. You can put a CD, DVD, or a 3.5 inch hard drive I it. Anything that connects to a PATA connector will work. When I connect to a Win XP box my DVD-RW shows up as a DVD-RW but will only burn CDs but will read both CDs and DVDs. That is because Win XP only burns CDs natively. After I installed Nero I could burn both. This DVD box will not boot from a CD or DVD on older computers but on newer motherboard there are some BIOS setting that will allow you to boot from it. The reason I did this was to make back-ups of computers that did not have a burner. Do you know of any really light weight DVD burning software? I am going to check the open source stuff and see if I can find a basic one. Nero and Roxio are both great but really take up a lot of room and make lots of registry changes. I don’t want to do that if I am backing up someone else’s computer.

My Brother Grant passed away.

I have not posted for some time now. Thankfully blogger.com has a password recovery feature. On May 26th my Brother, Grant Hayward Haynes Figuracion, passed away. He had been paralyzed for 22 years. For last 15 years I took care of him. My wife Mary found him that morning at 6:30 A.M. I don't think I will ever forget the sound of anguish in her voice. It is still hard for me to talk about this. Robert Soble theSobleizer lost his mother the day before this and reading his blog has helped me.