Synctoy 2.1

I use Synctoy 2.1 to backup my files to an external hard drive. The ext. drive was initially given letter E and I have had no problems because whenever I plug it in (always the same usb slot) it is always given the letter E. Someone at Staples told me it would be safer to "echo" to a flash drive because it has no moving parts and nothing can go wrong, which is not so with an ext. hard drive. My problem is that when I unplug the ext hard drive (E) and plug in a flash drive in the same USB slot, the laptop gives it the letter H but Synctoy keeps looking for drive E.

Can anyone please help me figure a way to tell synctoy to look for H instead of E.

Thanks in advance.

tonyvella said:

Someone at Staples told me it would be safer to "echo" to a flash drive because it has no moving parts and nothing can go wrong, which is not so with an ext. hard drive.................when I unplug the ext hard drive (E) and plug in a flash drive in the same USB slot, the laptop gives it the letter H but Synctoy keeps looking for drive E.

Can anyone please help me figure a way to tell synctoy to look for H instead of E.

Regarding what the Staples guy said: "nothing can go wrong". Phooey, I say Phooey.

Yes, flash drives have no moving parts. Yes, spinning drives do.

Unfortunately, that's not the only thing you need to worry about.

Have you ever examined the build quality of the typical USB flash drive? Flimsy to extremely flimsy. The cases can split in half for no apparent reason. Now you have a moving part.

They are the rankest of commodities and are under extreme price competition in the marketplace. Every pinchable penny is pinched out of them in the manufacturing process. Some are shoddier than others. Good luck trying to ascertain details on that. The marketing material is full of fuzzy language like "zippy" and "up to".

Moving parts aside, you are also subject to flimsiness and failures of the connection points and/or the controllers.

Their sole advantage is their small size---portability. Put 'em on your keychain or in your pocket.

Their speed is wildly variable from brand to brand and model to model--often by a factor of 10. Much much more variation than is found on hard drives. A given job might take 10 minutes or 90 minutes, depending on what particular USB flash drive is used.

I would NEVER trust a USB flash drive to be my only backup. I do use one as a backup, but it's an absolute last resort, to be used only if my 2 other backups catch fire, explode, or are stolen. Both of these other backups are to hard drive--primary backup to an internal and secondary backup to another internal mounted in an external dock. I don't use "external drives" as normally understood as I want to minimize complications.

Regarding synctoy: I've never used it, but am quite familiar with similar competing products. My guess is that you simply need to walk through the configuration process again and configure it with the H drive as the target, rather than the E drive---if you insist on using the USB flash drive for that purpose.

This is what I use and it is simple-

When the program launches, simply choose your external hdd to put the image on.

You can use Macrium ( free) to create the image.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/pa...2270j1060538j7


Be careful when downloading to always click "custom" and decline any of the crap it wants to add - i.e. changing search engines, home page, etc.

Make a boot cd( instructions on main page) and also after creating the image, do a Verify.

I do this by clicking Restore and browsing for the created image and you will see a link to Verify.

Put the image on on a separate internal hdd if you have one as well.

Do an image backup periodically, (I do it once a week or after any major changes).