Backup bookmarks for March 23rd through March 25th:

• Start-up unveils hybrid cloud/on-site backup service –
• Axcient Exits Stealth Mode With Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud Backup/Recovery – Storage – IT Channel News by CRN –
• Backup Provider Carbonite Loses Data, Sues Vendor – Business Center – PC World –
• Carbonite disputes lost backups report | The Industry Standard –
• Project Voldemort: Scaling Simple Storage at LinkedIn –
• How virtualisation impacts storage and backup :: SearchStorage.com.au –

Backup bookmarks for March 18th through March 21st:

• Data backup firm sues 2 hardware suppliers – The Boston Globe –
• Just In: How To Choose an Online Backup Provider – washingtonpost.com –
• LaCie and Wuala Merge to Create a Cloud of Storage Devices –
• Utility Shuts Off Power to Tape Backup System – Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) News Analysis – Byte and Switch –
• Symantec Launches Norton Online Backup – News and Analysis by PC Magazine –
• Beyond backup: The storage management market grows up –

I woke up at 2 AM this morning. Don’t ask why, because I haven’t the faintest idea, but there I was. Since by 3:00 it was clear I wasn’t going to get back to sleep, I turned on the computers and attempted to be productive.

By about 10:30 AM I was nearly finished creating a mind map for the website redesign for a corporate client, based on their suggestions and another site they thought was a good example. I use MindJet’s MindManager Pro 6 software for this. The latest version of MindManager is 8, but I never bothered to upgrade. The program already has more features than I know how to use.

Anyway, I had opened an earlier map to check something that I wanted to add to the current map. I was finished with the earlier map and went to close it, and got prompted with one of those “Do you want to save changes?” dialogs. I hadn’t made any changes to that file, so I said “No.”

And then discovered that I’d just closed the whole program, and lost the last 10 minutes of work I’d done. Four hours of sleep, yeah. Does wonders for the brain function.

I save my work often, and I have most of my programs set to autosave at least every ten minutes. But it turns out I can make a lot of changes to a document in ten minutes, at least if it’s a mind map.

Now, I have Mind Manager set to automatically create .BAK files the way I have Word set to automatically create .WBK files. In Word, the .WBK files preserve an earlier version of the file; you can return to it if the current version gets corrupted somehow. I assumed the same idea held true with MindManager, but I couldn’t even get it to open the .BAK file, so I had no way to tell whether it had preserved my new changes.

I also checked Free Agent Sync on my F:\ drive, but that copy of the file, like the one on my C:\ drive, had not preserved the changes. So I had to go back and re-create all the work I’d just done. And in the process of doing so, I misspelled someone’s name, a thing I normally pride myself on not doing, and probably left a few other things out.

I’ve since gone back and set the autosave in MindManager (it’s under Tools | Options | Save) to 5 minutes. That might keep me out of trouble. But only if I get enough sleep.

First, the just-to-be-totally-clear full disclosure part: Spare Backup is a client of mine. They hired me to write a white paper after I interviewed CEO Cery Perle for this blog back in July. I am not, however, an affiliate, or partner, or whatever you call it—I don’t get any money if you sign up with them. I only get paid for writing the sales copy, which is what I spent all weekend doing.

If you run a small business, you can expect a clean-cut, highly-motivated young salesperson to come knocking on your door quite soon bearing one of the Spare Backup Enterprise brochures explaining why online backup is so important to business continuity. (And yes, I can give you sources for all those statistics; there just wasn’t room to put them on the brochure.)

If you don’t run a business, you can probably expect one of the salesperson’s colleagues to ring your doorbell with a Family Pack Brochure in hand.

Both packages are aimed at protecting groups of computers (up to 5 for the Family Pack and up to 100 for the Enterprise) and can be ordered from My Spare Backup. (Which I did not write, but may, at some point, rewrite, or add onto.)

I labored hard to get the copy for these two documents done in time to have the designer format them and get them to the printer and into the hands of the salespeople. I am, naturally, seized with the desire to show them off. In retrospect, and with input from some people who were not involved in the project, I can see possible improvements, but I still think they’re worth posting here.

Now then—while I have not actually signed a contract to that effect, I think it would be in poor taste for me to do paid work for any of Spare’s direct competitors, to wit, other online backup companies. But the blog itself is meant to be independent and neutral, so I’m absolutely going to continue to cover anything that readers are interested in and that I can manage to fit in.

(Just as an aside, though—there’s this huge discussion in my blog comments about Dell Datasafe, and really, folks, it’s probably better if you talk to Dell about it, because I have no influence with them.)

Backup bookmarks for March 15th through March 18th:

• CapeCodTimes.com – You should back up if you want to stay ahead –
• How to backup your remote offices :: SearchStorage.com.au –
• How to backup and restore your netbook’s storage – TechChuck –
• Crikey – Is the Victorian Government running without data backups? –
• 2008 Backup and disaster recovery software finalists –