I have a set I rules I follow when computing. The first three are backup, backup, and backup.
This poor lady came to my computer users group with a external harddrive that was not functioning. I took a look at it. When I plugged it in to the power it started click loudly. Read More→
Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 ™ Storage Service. S3 does not have an application So Jungle Disk provides you with one. Jungle Disk creates a network drive in your computer and you just drag folder and files over or you can setup an automatic backup. I’ve been using Jungle Disk foryears and it is outstanding. Jungle Disk use to cost $20 and you could use it on as many computers as you wished but now I think it is some sort of monthly subscription. I think it’s $3 dollars a month. The data backed up via Amazon S3 is very cheap as well.
Carbonite is an online data backup solution. I’ve been using Carbonite to backup the data on my desktop for a years because of the price and all the data you want for $54.95 per year per computer. I have a lot of MP3s and photos to back and the all you can eat pricing is great if you have a lot of data.
Have you recently moved to Gmail but still have a most of your contacts and all of your Email still in a program like Outlook on your Windows computer. The Google Email Uploader is what you need. The Gmail Uploader will take those contacts and messages preserving your folder structure and import them right into Gmail.
As I say constantly, “The three most important maintenance task on your computer are, backup, backup and backup.” You can always restore your software or replace your computer in a worst case scenario. What you can’t do or can’t do easily is recover your data. This is what you want to spend most of effort doing. I’ve mentioned to online backup solutions I like. What I’m now going to talk about is getting a backup locally(At your home or workplace). The advantage of this is it’s quicker to restore your data when it becomes necessary to do so. This by no means replaces the the off-site backup. It is just faster and more convenient.
You can build a home server or NAS (Network Attached Storage) with any old Pentium 4 class computer you have laying around. Read More→
Backupify is one of the coolest services that I have seen. Backup all of your online life in one place. Enter all of your cloud accounts (Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, WordPress sites, Basecamp, Gmail, Facebook, Friendfeed, Blogger, Hotmail and coming soon Youtube, Xmarks and Tumblr) and Backupify will backup your data on those sites to an Amazon S3 server so you know it’s safe. Backup the cloud on the cloud. How cool is that?
Here’s a list of services that will store store your files online.
GMail- Send yourself important files as email attachment to a GMail account or use GMAil Drive to create a webased drive on your computer. >7GB/ FREE
SkyDrive- 25GB of online Storage. FREE
ADive- 50GB FREE
Amazon S3- Unlimited storage for a very small per GB transfered and storage fee. S3 has no user interface you must use a third party program like Jungle Disk (PC, Linux or Mac) or Gladinet (PC only, FREE).
Carbonite- Ultimate backup solution. Automatically backup an unlimited amount of data for $49.95 per year.
esnips- Have not used. 5GB storage. FREE!
Godaddy- 50MB for $6.99 or less per year. 10GB $13.95 per year.
Mozy- 2GB FREE! $4.95 per month unlimited.
Several of these can be used with GadinetCloud Disktop that I wrote about in the last post.
Called “Skydrive” a part of Microsoft’s “Windows Live” it allows you to store and share up to 25GB of data (documents, photos and other media files). “Windows Live Photo Gallery” syncs automatically to Skydrive which is terrific. What I am a very disappointed by; there is no method to transfer other files by a desktop application like it does with “Photo Gallery”. In my opinion this decreases the usefulness of “Skydrive” a lot. Right now you have to go to the website. Click “Upload Files”, click on “Browse”, click “Open” and then click “Upload”. This is so old-school! Not Web 2.0 at all. What it is really good for is sharing very big files with others. Files up to 50MB can be uploaded and shared.
Over all I think it’s a good start. The photo sharing function and it synchronization with “Photo Gallery” works great! I think Microsoft may someday do something with desktop synchronization. At lease I hope so!
