The last desktop PC I bought had a LightScribe CD/DVD writer. This is really a neat idea. I was never really one for printing labels for CDs and just wrote on them with a permanent marker pen. A colleague who used to print labels for backup CDs eventually gave up when the labels begun peeling off after several months. Since I’ve had this LightScribe writer I’ve printed a number of labels.

The way LightScribe works is that instead of having to print paper labels for your CDs or DVDs, once you have burned the CD or DVD, you just turn the disk over, pop it back into the writer and burn a label on the special surface area on the label side of the disk. Of course, you need special LightScribe writable media to do this, as well as a LightScribe compatible writer. The CD and DVD media have been coming down in price and are often on sale.

If you do not have a LightScribe Writer, internal or external ones are easy to come by, like the internal LG Electronics LG 20X DVDR DVD Burner with LightScribe or the External LaCie d2 External Dual Layer DVD±RW Writer with LightScribe.

The floppy disk is apparently dead, and one of its successors is the humble USB flash drive. As a writable medium, USB Flash Drives have replaced the floppy disk. This versatile device can include a biometric fingerprint scanner for security, or be a platform for applications. Most modern PCs can boot from a USB Flash Drive, and there are Operating Systems that can run from USB Keys, like Pen Drive Linux.

My primary USB Flash drive is a Sony 4GB Micro Vault Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive - I have the older, slower version. It doesn’t run any special applications, and the only software which came with it was some compression software which I don’t use. I often carry files between home and work, mainly because I’m too impatient to wait for downloads of software service packs or demo versions over the slow internet connection at work. Instead, I download larger files at home where my internet connection is faster. For a while I used to burn the downloaded files to CDRs which were cheap enough (I never quite bonded with rewritable CDRWs). However, as soon as 1GB USB Flash drives became affordable, I began using one instead. Now, with the Sony 4GB Micro Vault USB Flash Drive I can transfer even the largest of files from home to work.

I also have a Corsair Voyager 8GB Flash Drive which is large enough for me to transfer Virtual Machine Images, which run to many gigabytes.

With memory so cheap, I’ve decided that it’s goofy for a two-person household to share a single backup drive. So I’ve been pondering a couple of options, both comparably priced and with similar feature sets.

The Western Digital Passport and Seagate FreeAgent Go external drives both offer 160 gigabytes of storage and sell for under $150 apiece. The WD model is about $20 less expensive. They run off of a USB 2.0 port, have rotational speeds of 5400 RPM and weigh less than seven ounces (the WD model is lighter). Both have fairly tiny footprints — 15 to 16 square inches.

According to several user reviews, the WD model has a fairly flimsy casing, and at least one person suggested that he or she would be buying a case for it. One reviewer said he couldn’t get it to work off of a single USB port (from which it draws its power), so he’d suggested a Y-cable that lets the user plug the device into two ports at once. (Sometimes, USB port availability can be a real challenge for me.)

The Seagate model also requires both two ports according to one reviewer, but at least the package includes a dual-connection cable. No mentions of a cheapie container. (I can’t wait for Pricegrabber to add that “virtual feel” function!) And since I tend to be hard on my components (by virtue of my relative clumsiness), I guess Seagate’s going to get my business this time around — even though it’s a bit pricier than Western Digital.

As my friend Mike writes, “I don’t need it but I want it.”

He’s referring to the Garner PD-8400 Physical Hard Drive Destroyer, a piece of hardware the size of a desktop tower that folds hard drives in half. This device would have come in handy numerous times through the years when I was getting rid of old computers but had to spend hours wiping the hard disk clean before feeling comfortable downcycling them.

Of course, in real life the Destroyer has a more valuable application: to eliminate the possibility of a nefarious individual being able to retrieve data from hard drives that have been disposed of (like the ones you can see piled up at your local transfer station electronics recycle bins). This it does in ways that meet compliance standards set forth in HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

According to the Garner-Products site, the machine even comes with a “convenient carrying case.” No need to risk removing your SCSI or IDE hard drives from a secure location before they’ve been pulverized (a process that takes a mere 75 seconds).

Always looking for an upsell opportunity, the company recommends that you use its Destroyer in tandem with one of its degaussers for “the ultimate combination in data security.” But, hey, I’m not running the Pentagon here!