I’ve been using the beta version of SyncToy 2.0 to synchronize my mini-mobile USB hard drive to the file server. It’s been a great safeguard. All of my working data is kept on the mobile unit rather than the laptop’s hard drive due to space constraints. This also allows me to simply take the mobile hard drive home alone to work on as opposed to my entire laptop. This is VERY handy considering that I’ve been commuting by bike a lot lately.

But I only synchronize my data from the mini-mobile hard drive to the server once a day. Today, I found that to be a mistake. Not a major mistake, but good enough of one to make me tweak my method. After working on a project most of Friday, I took the unit home to work on over the weekend only to forget to bring it back in with me today. No problem, I have a copy up on the server. Whoops… if I work with that data, everything I did on Friday and over the weekend is lost.

So… I’ve now tweaked my scheduled sync to run twice a day — once in the morning, and then again in the afternoon before I leave. The task scheduler within XP makes it a breeze to do so too.

Open the task from within Task Scheduler, go to the Schedule tab, at the bottom of the screen check the box “Show multiple schedules.” Then, click on the “New” button at the top and set your second schedule for the task. In my case, the first task instance is set to fire at 9:30AM and the second instance is now set to fire at 3:30PM.

SyncToy v2.0 Beta

In the past two days I’ve seen references to three different options for online file storage. Obviously this is a growing industry!

The first two were in the latest issue of Tech Support Alert

1.3 Fifty Gigabytes of Free Online Storage
Most sites offering large quantities of free online storage usually impose strict monthly transfer limits. This one, suggested by subscriber “Greetz:One”, doesn’t seem to. More accurately I couldn’t see any. I gave it a quick whirl and as usual the upload speeds were modest. Also, the desktop client is pretty basic but it does allow you view your online files and to transfer files by drag and drop. OK, the service lacks the fancy backup management features you get with services like Mozy, but if you simply want a lot of online storage space then this site is well worth checking out.
http://adrive.com/home

1.4 More Free Online Storage Options
Subscriber Richard Barnes writes, “Gizmo I saw in January issue you mentioned Amazon S3 online Storage. I use a company called Online Storage Solution [1]. They charge $3 a month for unlimited storage and unlimited downloads. The upload/download method is a bit slow and primitive, but it does the job eventually. I see that they’ve got a special offer at the moment: $20 for a year’s storage. If you’ve got a load of stuff to store, it’s a lot cheaper than Amazon’s S3. I’ve uploaded about 12GB of photos and am now embarking upon uploading my 100GB music collection.”
http://onlinestoragesolution.com

The third mention I saw was today over on Online Tech Tips, about MediaFire, which  offers unlimited storage for free. A business model I have my doubts about, but that I have no experience with to give an opinion one one way or the other.

I have to admit, aside from a few things I keep in Google Docs, my Google Notebook, and my Flickr account. I don’t really store much online, but I am thinking about taking advantage of some of these tools for a nice offsite backup for my files. What have your experiences been?

I cannot stress the importance of having an offline backup. An offline backup is a copy of all your valued data to a backup medium such as an external hard drive that is stored on a shelf, in a safe etc. Anywhere but plugged in. Ideally you put it off site as well in your bank’s safe deposit box.

Storage is cheap these days. Just check out all the holiday sales on external usb drives. Get yourself one, copy all your data to it once a month then store it someplace safe where it is not plugged in. I use my safe here at home until I can move it to my safe deposit box away from the house.

I just spent two hours trying to recover data for my wife’s friend. The internal hard drive of the computer claims to be 2TB. A heck of a bargain when it originally was 40GB. The external drive she was using for backup is also toast. It sounds like a bomb waiting to go off. The reason for the loss? A nasty storm and only using a surge strip. Surge strips are a waste of money for anything but the most basic of electronics. Computers, game systems etc. Get yourself a UPS. That might have saved this person from the loss of all their data except what I could piece together from their ipod and a few usb thumb drives.

Still the best solution is an offline copy of all your data where no power hit or fire can affect it.