External hard drive?

Postby SolidSnickerdoodle » Sat Mar 04, 2017 5:44 pm

Thought about posting this in the TUG's sections, but since this is more of a hardware question I decided to post it here.

Due to the growing size of my bondage collection, I've found myself running out of space on my hard drive. Between bondage photos, videos, and other unrelated HD tv shows and movies I've downloaded, my measly 450 GB can't keep up. I've been giving some thought lately to the idea of getting an external hard drive.

I've been searching for one that fits my storage needs, but I also have some concerns about security. If I was to move all of my bondage collection onto it (which is what I would most likely be doing) is there any way for me to password-secure the external hard drive? Or at least put everything within a secure folder on the drive? Or does it strictly serve as a means to store data? I'd rather not have anyone in my family accessing it or stumbling upon it months later.

Any answers are appreciated.
There is only one God, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today.

Re: External hard drive?

Postby FiAsKo_ » Sat Mar 04, 2017 11:56 pm

Hi!

There are existing cases for harddrives which have a number-keypad built within.
If I have read it right, this case scrambels all data on the drive so that you have to format the drive New, if you dont remember the Pin!
Be prepared!!! !! !!!

German head is putting german thoughts in English words!

:D

Re: External hard drive?

Postby drawscore » Sun Mar 05, 2017 4:11 am

Another thought, is to use thumb drives (Also called "flash drives") You can put a lot of stuff on some of the new ones, which, I think, are up to 128 gb, and maybe even 256 gb.

The benefit, is that they are small, and easily concealed, as opposed to an external hard drive, which is large and bulky. They are easy to access, but the downside, is that you have to be careful with them, as they can become corrupt. To overcome this, I've found that making a copy, then putting that copy (back up) safely away, and not using it, unless necessary, works to preserve what you'd like to keep

Drawscore.

Re: External hard drive?

Postby xtc » Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:23 am

Endorse what Drawscore says. I have lost un-backed-up stuff from an external drive.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: External hard drive?

Postby SolidSnickerdoodle » Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:31 pm

drawscore wrote:Another thought, is to use thumb drives (Also called "flash drives") You can put a lot of stuff on some of the new ones, which, I think, are up to 128 gb, and maybe even 256 gb.

The benefit, is that they are small, and easily concealed, as opposed to an external hard drive, which is large and bulky. They are easy to access, but the downside, is that you have to be careful with them, as they can become corrupt. To overcome this, I've found that making a copy, then putting that copy (back up) safely away, and not using it, unless necessary, works to preserve what you'd like to keep

Drawscore.

xtc wrote:Endorse what Drawscore says. I have lost un-backed-up stuff from an external drive.

I suppose a flash drive would be more convenient. My collection is constantly growing, so unless I want to hook up an eternal hard drive all the time that might be a better option. Also nobody's going to question a flash drive stuck away in a drawer.

They make 256GB flash drives? Granted, I haven't been in the market for a flash drive since high school, but the ones I have only store up to 8GB of data. And I really don't want to have 25 flash drives.

Also, like you said, backing up files is probably a good idea. My computer is starting to have some technical problems. such as the power coming on, but the display not lighting up. It's becoming increasingly frequent and I'm afraid one day I won't be able to access my files. I'd probably have to trim down my collection to the content that I would most absolutely want to keep and put that flash drive away somewhere just in case.
There is only one God, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: Not today.

Re: External hard drive?

Postby drawscore » Thu Mar 09, 2017 11:14 pm

Check eBay for thumb drives, flash drives, and their other name, "memory sticks." I have a bunch kicking around the house, most of them in the 1-4 GB range. But then, I have a 2 GB drive with close to 5500 pics, vidcaps, cartoons, comics, illustrations, etc, and I'm using less than half of the drive's capacity. No movies or videos, though.

One other caution: There are three different video formats: NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. In the US, video tapes, televisions, and DVD's are in the NTSC format. Western Europe, Australia, and, I think, New Zealand. use PAL. The systems are not compatible, so if you live in the US, and get a video from Great Britain in the PAL format, it won't play. You have to get it converted.

There are regions, too, but most DVD's sold are "region free," and will play anywhere where the DVD, the TV, and the DVD player, are all of the same format.

Drawscore

Re: External hard drive?

Postby xtc » Fri Mar 10, 2017 6:08 am

I don't think anyone would question an external hard drive "hidden away" in a drawer. I for one use one frequently to make total backups of my data. I also keep several generations of them.
Boxer shorts are cool,
but little speedos rule!

More by the same author: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22729

Re: External hard drive?

Postby Jason Toddman » Fri Mar 10, 2017 10:05 am

Some externals do have password options which trigger every time the computer is restarted or the drive unplugged / reattached. I have one like that which carries 2TB, and there are some that carry 4 TB. And that was over a year ago; they may be even bigger by now.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: External hard drive?

Postby BoundBoyBeta » Fri Mar 10, 2017 2:21 pm

If you care about actual concealment then a micro SD card is superior to a thumb drive, and from a hardware standpoint are near identical. Though they do require some form of card reader.
There are lots of options for encrypting USB's or external drives, some much more secure than others, though personally I would just accept that all of these can be very inconvenient and actually do very little from a security standpoint.
On a backing up front, having some form of entirely offline backup is usually the best option. Some backup drives designed for backing up your entire computer have the major flaw that they have to be plugged in to the computer the entire time so they can run constant backups, this means any vaguely competent piece of malware can damage, edit or delete this data too.
Personally I would suggest going for concealment over security if your only concerns are a family member finding it. If you do intend on using a thumb drive I recommend having two as it can be hard to predict when a thumbdrive will give out and cause you to potentially loose all your data. I should probably stop myself here before I go into a technical rant about the benefits of different types of data storage.