To the Editor:

After reading “Creating an Electronic Filing Cabinet” [January 2004, page 65], I have a few suggestions. To put it simply, burning and reburning onto rewritable compact discs (CD-RW) is painfully slow; using regular recordable CDs (CD-R) is better. You will need software (e.g., DirectCD) available at each of your computers to read them. If you are prepared to make an investment, you can buy a 20 GB universal serial bus (USB) external hard drive for less than $200 and load the drivers on each computer you use (or carry the drivers on a minidisc). Then you can plug and go. File transfers and searches are fast and easy, and the hard drives are thin and small and can connect to lap-tops or desktops. I use this system to back up all my office work and bring it home each day to store on another computer and laptop. This makes three backup copies. I also burn CDs once a year to store the past year’s work, including letters, medicolegal reports and correspondence.