Tag Archives: backup

It’s International Backup Day!

It’s World Backup Day! It’s not that you should only backup once a year, it’s an awareness day. So I guess it should be called “Backup Awareness Day”. But seriously, you should backup your important documents and photos all the time. Why? Because you’ll be very sad / upset / angry when you lose those files. Please notice, I said “when”, not “if”. Moving your photos to a different device (and deleting off the computer) is not a backup, it’s the only copy. Multiple copies is alwaysrecommended!!!

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If it’s an important document, save multiple copies. If it’s your resume (CV), save it as “Resume March 2012” so that you’ve got previous versions of the file if something happens. If you’ve made massive changes to that document, just e-mail a copy to yourself; the copy in your mail account is an off site backup. When I do new technology plans (100 page documents) I save new versions every few hours, I don’t want to think I moved those 10 pages from section 7 to section 5 and realize later I never pasted them, I can go back and get an earlier version of those pages later.

If it’s photos, don’t wait until your camera is full, that’s the only copy of those photos, if you lose the camera, it gets stolen, or something else weird happens, you lose all those photos!!! Even uploading them to a site like Walgreens, Costco, Kodak or wherever you might send your photos is a backup (it’ll cost to get your photos out, but at least they aren’t lost); these places don’t guarantee that they’ll keep your photos but they do want you to share them and print more copie$ of them, just be sure you’re uploading the largest possible size photos. Facebook is not good for this, they do not keep high quality versions of the photos, they will not be good for printing later.

Every so often back your documents and photos up to multiple DVD (standard DVD’s hold more than 4 GB) and make multiple copies; once you’ve got them sorted making five copies isn’t much harder than making one copy. Keep a copy at your Mom’s house or at your kids house or in your safe deposit box. You don’t want all the copies at the same place in case there is a fire and they all burn down. Then you can delete these photos from the cloud and you’ve got more space for more photos.

The last few versions of the Macintosh OS will back up to an external drive via Time Capsule and you can go back in time and look at what version was on the computer at a particular time (it’s very cool and easy).

There are off site services you can use (I use Dropbox).

Syncing your photo to your computer generally backs up the phone numbers, calendar, photos and more. The latest version of the iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) will back up automatically daily to the iCloud if you wish; the problem with this is it’s an all or nothing option when you want to restore.

All photos that you take with your iPhone or iPad get automatically backed up to the iCloud. These then show up on your computer in the iPhoto Photo Stream. If you import from a camera to iPhoto, it automatically puts those photos in the Photo Stream and you can see them on all the devices you’ve synced with the iCloud (including your AppleTV). It only keeps the last 1,000 photos and doesn’t keep any videos, but it’s a partial backup. So this is an automatic download that I get have in the cloud too.

Backing up is especially important if your main computer is a portable device. You can earlier drop or have stolen your laptop or tablet, you need those files backed up!

I recovered my photos !!!

sample Aipteck Chicao photoI thought I lost my photos from Chicago the other day but I purchased the $20 software CardRaider from ecamm and now it’s all better. I download the program, it scanned my files and I think it recovered them all (movies and photos). I’ll try and post some tonight post some tomorrow (I forgot I’ve meeting Mom for dinner).

There are a lot of software programs but most are a lot more expensive. Thanks for the recommendation Dave!!

I lost most of my Chicago photos :(

I’ve got a very strict process I follow when copying photos from a camera:

  • Lock the memory chip (which I always forget to do).
  • Copy the photos to a computer.
  • If I copy the photos to another device (CD, DVD, FTP, external hard driver) then I delete the files from the memory chip.
  • If I can’t copy them, I move them to a folder on the chip “to delete” so that I know there is a copy somewhere but not a great copy yet (and then I don’t confuse old pictures with new).

    I was in a hurry I wanted to get that stuff done before the train took off, I figured someone would sit next to me since the train is sold out and I wanted to get all the USB SD adaptor and cameras put away.

    The first thing I did was that I moved them to a new folder and then something bad happened. I’m not sure if I tried to drag the new folder to my computer too soon or what but I had to force a reboot and they chip is now goofed. I will be using some recovery software on this. I had just quick reformatted the chip so all the files should be sequential so I’m hopeful.

    I took lots of photos and video while testing this new camera out with the bloggers and while running around Chicago. I’m so bummed. I guess I’ve got 5 hours on the train to see if I can find some software to download to fix it. I do have a few photos I took on my other camera, but none of the DaveCago people are on it and neither are any of the night shots I was taking (after a second look, other than out my hotel room window, I really didn’t take any with the other camera).

    Any Macintosh software suggestions? I have a Windows machine if you have a Windows only suggestion.

  • .Mac Just got WAY bigger !

    10Gb.MacI’ve mentioned Apple’s .Mac service before and I really like it. Apple has expanded their .Mac on-line backup/syncing to 10GB (from 1 GB). Apple has always been behind the curve in how much storage space for the cost ($99 a year) but they’ve made up for it. With the increased storage it really makes the family plan more practical and affordable too.

     .macIf you have a Macintosh, you’ll love this (especially if you have a laptop or more than one Mac). It’s a remote backup / synchronization / file sharing / training / web publishing software service rolled all-in-one! The biggest feature to me is that if you use your iDisk for all your documents, the next time you connect to the internet it seamlessly synchronizes this document to the server & all your other Macs and you can access the files from any web browser on any platform (it also keeps a copy of all your documents on your hard drive so you can see them if you aren’t on-line). It also synchronizes your bookmarks, e-mail, calendar, contacts data/settings across all your Macs. So if I drop my laptop (or have it stolen), I don’t lose any of my data (as long I’ve been on the internet recently).

    With the extra storage I can save all my purchased iTunes to to my .Mac Music folder and it’ll be on all my computers and I don’t need to make a copy until I have a DVD’s worth of music. The same goes for my photos, I’m always worried about losing my irreplaceable photos.

    For regular documents, you’ll never notice that it’s biggest downside, it’s slow. But if you drag a bunch of huge files in there it’ll take a while, but since it’s seamless you’ll probably never notice, if it doesn’t have enough time, it’ll just continue the next time you’re on the ‘net! Continue reading

    Museum of Bizarre Discasters (Disc-asters)

    This week in Circuits with David Pogue he’s interviewing Scott Gaidano president of Drive Savers (a hard drive recovery business):

    This is our most famous computer: it’s a laptop that was rescued from the bottom of the Amazon River. A cruise ship hit an underwater barge, and sank down to the bottom. And the woman, an amateur diver, several days later, against all international law, broke in with a Maglight flashlight. Went down two flights of stairs underwater. Green, dark water. Found her stateroom. Remembered to bring her key, and rescued her laptop, and got it to Drive Savers. And we recovered all the data for her.

    What makes that one extra interesting is that message came through while I was planning and trying to decide on the 3 or 4 day Nile cruise of my Egypt trip. Maybe just the 3 day (and I’ll back up all my data).

    .Mac is an Awesome Service (and they just quadrupled their storage)

     .macI just noticed that .Mac expanded their storage from 250MB to 1GB (as of August 2007 it’s now 10GB!) which makes it even better! If you have a Macintosh, you’ll love this (especially if you have a laptop or more than one Mac). It’s a remote backup / synchronization / virus checking / file sharing / training / web publishing software service rolled all-in-one! I was going to post an update and I realized I’ve never posted about it before (I’d swear I had, I can’t believe I hadn’t). Here’s a few details:

  • You get an iDisk which just mounts on your desktop like a hard drive, floppy or thumb drive. It has remote storage (off your computer) and will automatically sync when you are on the net (but you can use it even when you aren’t on the net). This is great if you have a laptop. If you lose/break it, you still have you files.

    Continue reading