FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-29-04: Backing Up Your Cell Phone

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

The CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Expo and conference took place in San Francisco earlier this week, which makes it particularly appropriate for me to talk about backing up your cell phone.

The new "Smart Phones" were prominently on display at the Expo. These are essentially a combination of PDA and cell phone, and as such are already designed to be synced with a computer for backup. Some also use memory cards, as many of the newer PDAs do.

But what about those of us who use more ordinary cell phones? After all, Smart Phones are generally expensive and even the technical-minded reviewers in PC Magazine find some of their features incomplete and difficult to use—not to mention the fact that you might have to change wireless providers in order to be able to use the model you prefer.

Because cell phones save numbers that you have dialed and the phone numbers of incoming calls, it's easy to add new numbers to your phone book, and a cell phone is easier to carry than a Rolodex. Those numbers don't necessarily make it onto paper or into your computer contact program. After all, if you can get the number out of your phone at any time, what's the point having it somewhere else?

The point is this: if you don't have those numbers stored elswhere, how will you get them back if the phone is lost or stolen? And then there are phone upgrades: do you really want to have to enter all those phone numbers by hand, working your way through the number pad to spell out the names of your contacts? I don't—I've had to re-enter mobile phone numbers by hand twice now, once after a phone was stolen and once after upgrading.)

One vendor at the expo, Remo Mobile/Xpherix, offers services called iBackup, iPhonebook, and iDatebook. Naturally I looked at iBackup first: "Backup and restore your contacts at any time on your existing or new mobile phone."

I went to the website and discovered that there was only one model of mobile phone that works with iBackup: the LG VX6000. iPhonebook, which stores your phone numbers online, works with a wider range of mobile phones (though not mine), and might be an alternative. Xpherix products are designed to work with Windows PCs and either Microsoft Outlook or Palm OS. Clearly, this was not the ultimate solution, and certainly not a solution for me personally.

Supposedly my wireless provider, Verizon, is offering, or plans to offer, a backup service to those who sign up for their "Get It Now" service, but I couldn't find any mention of this in their "Get It Now" brochure or on their website. It is, however, worth checking with your own provider to see whether they have such a service, whether it works with your phone, and what it costs. Keep in mind that any service of this kind means that you are transmitting your contacts over a cellular network—and cell phone signals are notoriously easy to tap into for even entry-level hackers.

Not to be deterred in my pursuit of a backup solution, I kept looking, and found a reprint of an article on cell phone backup which recommended FutureDial's SnapSync ($30 for the software, data transfer cable not included) and Intellisync Phone Edition ($34.95, data transfer cable not included).

And, somewhat to my surprise, both of these products will work with my phone (a Motorola 120e). I haven't bought either of them, though, because a little research showed that it was possible to download the older TrueSync (the software described in my cell phone manual) from the Motorola website for free. I also downloaded the free Mobiledit Lite. I'm not sure how well either will work, since I don't have a data transfer cable (available elsewhere for much less than either Verizon or Motorola charges), but I promise to let you know the results once I do.

In conclusion: getting your cell phone backed up will probably require some research, time, and money, but if the thought of losing your cell phone gives you cold chills, it's almost certainly going to be worth it. If the prospect of figuring it out is too daunting, I'd be happy to do the research and installation for you at my usual rates.

But don't put off backing up the rest of your data until you've found a cell phone solution!

Until next week, when I'll have more software and hardware recommendations,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-22-04: Backing Up Your PDA

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

This week's topic is backing up your PDA. As usual, I have a "What happens if you don't?" story on this subject. If you're one of those people who has a Palm Pilot or Pocket PC device but doesn't use it much, you may have experienced this already.

Suddenly, after months of forgetting you even owned it, you want to use your PDA, perhaps to look up a phone number. You drag it out of its hiding place in your briefcase, handbag, or office drawer and push the power button.

Nothing happens.

So you plug it in to recharge it (assuming the power cable and the PDA are in the same place), and once it's working again you discover that it's completely empty: your contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes are nowhere to be found.

How did that happen? PDAs use solid state memory. The operating system and basic programs are stored in flash-ROM, and all of your data in stored in flash RAM—unless you have it on a smart card or memory stick. (Most new PDAs have slots for one or more types of memory card.) Keeping everything in RAM makes PDAs fast and means you don't have to save your data—but it also means that if the PDA is totally without power, the transistors will lose their charge and everything in flash RAM will flash out of existence. (When changing the batteries, do it fast.)

Generally speaking, you can avoid this problem by recharging your PDA frequently, whether you are using it or not. (Also, avoid leaving it in the hot sun—this seems to drain the charge out of PDAs and cell phones at amazing speeds.)

So how do you get your data back?

Your desktop or laptop is the simplest and most obvious place to back up your PDA. (And your PDA can act as a backup for some of the data on your computer.) Palm devices back up automatically, so if you have an empty Palm, just sync it to the profile on your computer and all will be restored—assuming that you didn't lose everything on your drive at some point before the PDA went down.

If your PDA or handheld uses Pocket PC (or the older Windows CE), you need to set the backup process yourself. Connect your device, open ActiveSync and select Options | Backup/Restore. It can take up to 30 minutes to make your first backup, depending on how much data and how many optional programs you've installed on it.

You can also get third-party products for PDA backups. Most of them require (or include) a Smart Card, which is used to hold the backup the same way an XHD holds the data from your desktop machine.

I haven't tried any of these personally, so I will only list them and not make recommendations.

• Backup Buddy for Palm OS (Windows & Mac, $29.95)
• BackupMan for Palm OS ($10)
• Botzam Backup ($14.95)
• MDM Mobile Backup card for PalmOS or Pocket PC ($49.99)
• Sprite Backup for Pocket PC ($19.95 basic, $29.95 Premium)

Good luck with backing up your PDAs—and don't forget to back up your main computer while you're at it!

Dedicated to saving your data,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-15-04: No Such Thing as a Free iPod

Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends:

I can't believe that I woke up at 4:30 this morning and still didn't have time to write this before I left the house, but some days are just like that. (I did discover all kinds of great horrors-of-tech support cartoons on the web, though.)

I got a message from someone today saying "My laptop computer crashed about 10 days ago, and it will be at least another 2 weeks before I have it back—cross your fingers that it will have my docs still on it—cuz I never got around in a year to backing it up!"

Don't let that be you. If you've been too busy to make your backups yet today, do it now.

I wanted to continue on the theme of solid state (or "flash") memory and small portable drives. Last week we talked about key drives and compact flash cards. This week it's iPods.

You might not think about iPods as data storage. I didn't. After all, the billboards show Hip Young Things with earplugs dancing, and focus on the iPod as an MP3 player.

Two weeks ago the Ur-Guru sent me a link to http://www.freeipods.com and said "Now, trust me, this thing is for real. The guys at Screensavers tried it out after not trusting it (and not letting the company know about it in order to avoid preferential treatment) and it takes a month or two before anything arrives but... you do get a free iPod." But he couldn't participate himself because it's only for U.S. residents.

My first thought, not being a Hip Young Thing myself, was "Do I really want one?" MP3 players are not at the top of my "coveted" list.

To which he replied: "Why would anyone not want a free 20GB mini xHD?"

I'd never thought of it like that, and said so. He replied, "To me iPod=Apple but in tech terms to me iPod=little carryable HD with features that can make it a very small mini PDA. I never considered those MP3 players to be anything other than HD's or RAM + some electronics. It would work like the USB keys. Just a whole lot bigger. There's a tool for it called iPod Agent."

In fact, an iPod is quite a complex little item, compared to an external hard drive or an ordinary flash-memory "key drive." The components of an MP3 player are:

# Data port
# Memory
# Microprocessor
# Digital signal processor (DSP)
# Display
# Playback controls
# Audio port
# Amplifier
# Power supply

The memory can be flash memory, like that used by digital cameras and thumb/key drives (with the same advantages and drawbacks), but the iPod uses a microdrive, which is a hard drive shrunk down to the size of a CompactFlash card. The Wikipedia describes them as "more sensitive to physical shock and temperature changes than flash memory, though in practice they are very robust." You can buy microdrives on their own (Hitachi's appear to be the best), but you need the right kind of CompactFlash card reader to use one, and it doesn't have all the added features of an MP3 player.

So I figured I would check the free iPod offer out. I don't have a PDA, and while my XHD is only slightly larger than a Palm Pilot, I can't use it as one.

Of course, there's a catch. The free iPod offer is a sort of combination pyramid scheme and affiliate program. Once you sign up, you're given a range of offers from which to choose. They appeal to a range of taste: book clubs, music clubs, video clubs, etc. I picked the coffee club, seeing as 1) I was almost out of coffee anyway and 2) they only required one additional order before you could cancel, and I know some of the book and music clubs require you to keep buying things, at not-particularly-a-bargain prices, for several months. Not much point in signing up for something that would cost more than the iPod!

That's actually the easy part. My coffee arrived two days ago and it's good stuff; I may actually stick with the membership after I've fulfilled my initial obligation.

But to get your iPod you have to refer 5 other people and have them sign up for an offer. I sent invitations to about 10 people; none of them have signed up, and I can't really blame them. It smells like spam and it involves participants in multi-level marketing, though ultimately you can end up with a $300 item for much less than that.

The moral of the story? There's no such thing as a free iPod. But if you were planning to spend money on something in the offers anyway, know a lot of possibly-interested people, and don't mind waiting 6-8 weeks for your iPod, just sign yourself on up (and help me get mine).

And if you already have an iPod, there's no need to buy a key drive to transport files between work/school and home. Just download the free iPod Agent software. Moreover, these drives hold a lot more data than a CD, and they keep adding capacity.

I'll be back next week with some thoughts on backing up (with) your PDA.

Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-8-04: USB Flash Drives

Two weeks ago one of my Faithful Readers sent me a New York Times article about USB flash drives as fashion accessories. A day or so later, a colleague showed me a paper sent by his son's school requiring all pupils to buy these drives in order to transport files between home and school.

Flash memory has been around for a while, and Real Geeks were carrying keychain drives at least two years ago while the rest of us were still figuring out which kind of card would fit into our digital cameras. A USB flash drive is similar to those cards—it just has a case around it to let you connect it to a computer without a card reader. These days you can get these USB drives built into pens, watches, and even cosmetics.

But besides being cute and trendy, what are they good for? On the up side, solid state memory technology isn't vulnerable to mechanical breakdown. You will never hear one make that horrible clacking noise that signals a dead magnetic drive. The case protects them from dust and scratches. And they're fast—they don't have to spin in order to write data. You can even use them to transport files between a Mac and a PC (provided both have newer operating systems).

On the downside, flash memory costs more per megabyte than any other kind of storage. Moreover, its capacity is usually limited to less than that of a CD. If you only have a USB 1.1 port on your machine, the slow transfer time will counterbalance the fast write time. And the darn things are easy to misplace, which makes their frequent lack of security features a bit risky.

An M-Systems white paper on flash drive reliability states: "Flash technology is inherently unreliable...The first and foremost problem with flash is the number of erase cycles it can endure...Using the device over the specified number of cycles can cause data loss after even a few days!"

What does this add up to? Flash drives are great for storing data in the short term. If you want to carry files from one computer to another, they're great. But don't use them for anything that you want to store over a long period of time, never mind anything you want permanently recorded. You're better off with a CD or DVD for those things.

And forget being able to store a mirror image of your entire desktop PC's hard drive on one—at least for the next few years.

More backup news and commentary next week,
Sallie

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-1-04: Backing Up Outlook Express

After last week's piece on the Personal Folders Backup tool for Outlook, someone asked me about backing up Outlook Express.

If you use Outlook Express for your e-mail, my advice is—DON'T. Like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook Express is the mail program most targeted by (and vulnerable to) the makers of viruses, worms, and other forms of malicious code.

However, if OE is what you use and what you've been using, you do still need to know how to back up your mail.

This, it turns out, is not as straightforward as with Outlook. Instead of keeping its mail and contact information all in one place, Outlook Express divides it across several different files. Microsoft provides detailed instructions for backing up and restoring Outlook Express data.

Here is the short form of the article.

To backup Outlook Express data:

• Copy mail files to a backup folder
• Export the Address Book to a file
• Export the mail account to a file
• Export the news account to a file

To restore or import Outlook Express data:

• Import messages from the backup folder
• Import the Address Book file
• Import the mail account file
• Import the news account file

There's also an article about backing up and restoring the Outlook Express Blocked Sender List (which serves in place of the highly effective Outlook 2003 spam filtering system) and Mail Rules. Doing this involves exporting/importing part of the Registry—something that is best left to your tech support person, so that at least you can blame them if it results in a disaster.

In summary, backing up Outlook Express is a lot of work. Recognizing this, several companies have produced third-party Outlook Express backup products. If you do a Google search on "backup outlook express", you'll find several, some with free trials. They cost less than buying the full version of Outlook, but then again, all they provide is the ability to back up OE—they don't include the integrated calendar, tasks, contacts, spam filters, mailmerge capabilities, etc of the full version of Outlook.

If all you want to back up are the actual messages, you can drag and drop them into a folder on your external hard drive, or put them onto a CD. I've done this before when transferring data from one computer to another. It's not very sophisticated, but it works.

If you prefer your mail client just to do e-mail, but want an alternative to Outlook Express for purposes of internet security, try Eudora, PocoMail, or Mozilla Thunderbird. All have free or ad-supported versions. They are not necessarily easy to back up, however.

For those who use Netscape mail, Harvard University has provided handy backup guides:

• PC Users
• Mac Users

You can find a list of Windows e-mail backup utilities here.

Now that I've overwhelmed you with tasks and links, I'll leave you to your backups.