Lessfeet » storage

Mount Skydrive As A Network Drive

Mark — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:38:27 +0000

I really like Skydrive Explorer. It creates a virtual folder so you can drag files into it but if you wished to use Skydrive to backup data automatically you are out of luck.

Here’s a method to mount Skydrive as an actual network drive. It requires what I can only call a kluge. It requires you to download the new Microsoft Office 2010 Beta (later you will need the trail download). Creating a file and saving it to the web (File, Save and Send, Save to Web, Skydrive). Once you login to your Skydrive account you will see the address of the network. Copy that address. If your using Windows Vista or Windows 7 (of course you can use Windows XP although I do not remember how to do it) right click on “Computer” choose “map network drive” and follow the prompts to enter you email address and password. You may then use your Skydrive like any real folder. You may now use SyncToy or any other backup program with Skydive.

Here are the details how to do this from Download Squad.

Me Want Drobo

Mark — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:28:42 +0000

My first three rules of computing are backup, backup and backup. You may have heard this before?

I use Carbonite a cloud backup solution that works very well but I really should have a local backup as well.

321 Backup

Drobo looks like a great solution. Drobo is an external hardive based storage device that uses multiple drive in their BeyondRAID configuration. BeyondRAID is Drobos own system that allows you to hot-swap drives of any size. Drobo give you a warning when your drives are nearly full and you just snap out your smallest drive and snap in a larger one.

Drobo can get a starter kit with a “Drobo w/ 2 – 1 Terabyte harddives” for $524. You can add up to 4 drives with a total capacity of up to 16 Terabytes. The Drive are just ordinary SATA drives that you can buy anywhere. You don’t have to buy any from Drobo.

More information and watch demos by Cali Lewis of Geekbrief TV.

One Is Not Good Enough

Mark — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:43:15 +0000

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. I plugged it in my laptop and it saw there was a drive but it could not be accessed. It just started clicking more. This was not a good sign. I asked her “You still have the files on your computer right?” She said, “No someone at the PC Users Group told her to backup to the external harddrive.” I told her, “Backing up is when you still have the original file but you also copied the file to some other medium for long term storage.” I did not have the tools to completely check the drive but I was almost sure it was dead. As it turns out there were photos of her deceased husband on it that did not exist anywhere else.

Read posts on backing up.

Jungle Disk

Mark — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:00:16 +0000

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

Mark — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:05:45 +0000

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.

Gmail Uploader

Mark — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:37:47 +0000

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.

Build A Home Server

Mark — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:46:26 +0000

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. Besides the P4 you need a 500GB or more harddrive. At least 512MB of RAM is prefered. I do not have a spare drive around and later I’m planning to make this RAID5 so I am buying a 4 port SATA card and new 1 terabyte drive from NewEgg. Later I will buy the 2 or 3 additional drives I need to set up the RAID5.

After you gather the hardware you need to download FreeNAS and burn the image file to a CD. FreeNAS is free and open-source software that will turn your computer into a NAS.

So you have your Pentium 4 computer with 512MB RAM. You have a 500GB or more hardrive and you’ve downloaded FreeNAS. I will not explain how to put the parts together. If you don’t know how to do that you should not be doing this project. Now you are ready to begin.

The rest of the insructions!

Virtual Drives

Mark — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:06:31 +0000

I mentioned in the post Cloud Storage Overview that there are some services where you can store your precious files via cloud based storage (on the Internet). Here are a couple of options that will create a virtual drive on your computer as if it was an actual drive.

Dropbox is a service that gives you 2 gigabytes free with an option to pay a small amount for up to 100 gigabytes. For Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Microsoft’s Skydrive gives you 25 gigabytes absolutely free but you need a third party program to make it a virtual drive. “Skydrive Explorer” is a free program that does this. It is really easy to setup.

Download and install Dropbox and Skydrive Explorer now.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Mark — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:28:30 +0000

Thanks to Zack who commented to my SkyDrive post for this one!

Gladinet is the future! It is Web 3.0! Gladinet is a great little application that brings all of your online storage to your desktop as virtual drives. Use online storages (Not only SkyDrive but ADrive, Google Docs, Amazon S3 , and others.) as if they were local folders on your computer. Access local folders on your home computer remotely as if they were right there (only with standard version which is only available by invitation right now). But you can download free version now.

There is so much more in this appliction I’ll let this video tell you about it.

Skydrive

Mark — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:38:03 +0000

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!