Mobile Music Devices Make Great Back-Up Tools

When he hits the road and isn't sure if he'll have high-speed Internet access to the corporate servers so he can back up his work, Bruce Turkel will often break out the iPod.

The Coconut Grove, Fla., advertising executive won't be listening to the blues. Instead, he'll plug the standard iPod cable from his Powerbook laptop to his iPod, and copy the Word and Quicken files he wants to protect to his music player. To be sure, he won't be tapping his toes to these files. But with 20 gigabytes of space in his iPod, at least his data is safe until he returns to the office and can transfer it to his company's server.

"I've written my last two books almost exclusively in airports and on airplanes, and I used the iPod to protect them," said Turkel, who writes and speaks extensively on marketing and creativity.

Today's portable music players can do more than store and play music. When used as glorified external, portable hard drives, the devices can back up almost any digital file from Word documents to spreadsheets, Powerpoint files to photographs.

Harnessing the iPod, iRiver and other devices for this function is widely regarded as an unintentional secret among the technology industry. Spreadsheets or digital photographs are binary 1s and 0s, as are the songs recorded in MP3, WMA or other music formats.

Music devices feature a simple user interface, ubiquitous USB plug into the computer and simple recognition by newer operating systems, like Windows 2000 and XP, and Macintosh OS 9 and X. With most, no software or drivers are needed. Once plugged in, the drive appears as another storage device on a PC's My Computer screen, for example.

External hard drives are nothing new. Most backup drives have multiple gigabytes of space, and are designed to store numerous and voluminous files. Such drives, like the Sony Giga Vault or Maxtor One-Touch drive, hold up to 300 gigabytes, and can cost several hundred dollars. For recurring, large backups, don't use a musical device to replace an external drive, partly because iPods tend to be carried everywhere and are more likely to be lost or stolen.

How do you transfer a bunch of files to your iPod? If using Windows, plug the USB cables into the PC and the music device, open Windows Explorer, and drag and drop copies of needed files onto the iPod's directory on the screen. If you need to access the files while on the road, just pull out the device and USB cable, plug it in to a computer, and double-click to open the files.

Many consumers and business owners don't realize that music drives can be used for data storage, said Lance Ohara, director of new products with Lexar Media Inc., a Fremont, Calif., maker of data storage devices. The company's LDP-800 includes a built-in microphone and voice recorder, along with a high-contrast LCD display for viewing what's stored on the device.

Not sure if a music player can store data? Look for "USB Mass Storage" on the label, he said.

Jeff Zbar, the ChiefHomeOfficer.com, is a speaker, writer and expert on alternative officing. He is the author of Teleworking & Telecommuting: Strategies for Remote Workers and Their Managers (Made E-Z Products, 2002); Safe@Home: Seven Keys to Home Office Security (FirstPublish 2001) and Your Profitable Home Business (on CD-ROM from Made E-Z Products). Visit his Web site to subscribe to Home Office Success Stories, his free electronic magazine on home business and teleworking.