Saved by SuperDuper: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-22-08

This week’s (very late) backup reminder is one for the Mac users. It comes from Dave, the founder of EAR/Rational Music. Dave also writes his own Music Blog.

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I’m a SOHO owner and Mac user and I was saved by SuperDuper!, disk cloning software made by Shirt Pocket Software. (Not affiliated with them other than being a satisfied customer.) I have a separate building on my property from which I run the business. I use a small space heater in winter and a portable swamp cooler in the summer. As you might imagine, the barn, as I call it, isn’t exactly “climate controlled.” At the time of this story, I was using an eMac, an all-in-one computer which served me well. One Sunday afternoon in April, I went out there and found the computer off. I assumed we’d lost power, which happens occasionally, but to my chagrin I found that I was unable to boot the computer at all. The screen showed a flashing question-mark icon, which means the computer could not find a disk to boot from.

I have a 300GB external hard drive that I use for backups, and I keep it in the house, rather than in the barn, for two reasons. First off, the house is climate controlled, so the drive won’t be affected by extreme temperatures. Second, if there is a fire or other damage to the barn, the external drive will likely be protected in the house. Of course a hard drive isn’t a perfect backup solution, since it could fail, but it’s unlikely that both drives will fail at the same time, especially if the backup drive is unplugged when not in use.

After retrieving the drive from the house, I plugged it into the FireWire port of the eMac, and rebooted. Since this drive contained a clone of the internal hard drive of the eMac, I was up and running in 5 minutes. As it turned out, the clone had been made about a month prior to this incident, so not all files were up to date, but the one file I really needed, the data file for my invoicing/accounting program, had actually been copied to my wife’s laptop earlier in the day. At the time I did not have a laptop, and I would copy this file to my wife’s laptop when I wanted to work in the house instead of in the barn.

So the bottom line is that I was lucky. SuperDuper! got me most of the way there (and indeed, would have gotten my farther had I run it more often), and dumb luck got me the rest of the way. It turns out the hard drive in the eMac was completely fried, and not even visible to any recovery software. With a bit of work, I was able to install a new hard drive about a month later (as I said, it’s an all-in-one machine, and as such, it isn’t made to be upgraded), but prior to doing that, I was able to run just fine from the external drive.

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Thanks to Dave for reminding us that the hard drive on a Mac is just as likely to fail as the hard drive on a Windows machine—and to his wife for letting him copy his financial data to her laptop.

Technorati Tags: Super Duper,eMac,EAR/Rational Music

Back Up with Personality: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-06-08

It’s been less than a year since I reviewed Universe Point’s ION backup—and more than a month, I confess, since CEO Jeff Snader asked me to check out the latest version.

ION’s big selling point is monitored backups: if something goes wrong with your backup job, ION will tell you about it. This is a good feature to have; it keeps you from learning the hard way that your backups are no good. Finding out about the error right away lets you fix the problem and re-run the job. And no, ION never sees your data.

Okay: monitoring is a great feature. Most SOHO backup programs don’t provide it. But that’s not what I want to write about here.

What strikes me most about ION—even more in version 2.5 than in the pre-release version I evaluated in 2007—is the user interface. Every screen contains prominent links to additional help, as well as clear instructions for every step in the process of creating and running backup jobs.

And not only was the documentation written in simple English, but the author clearly has a sense of humor. Error messages say “Uh-oh” and “You’re not listening!” Tabs have titles like “Name Time” and “The What.”

Of course, this did rather tempt me to name my test backup “Fred,” but I settled for “test.”

Under “The What” (that is, what to back up), the three options are “Common choices,” “Choose Files,” and “Outlook.” I opted for “Outlook” and found two very important options there: “Close Outlook before backup” and “Restart Outlook after backup.” This is because Outlook “locks” the PST files and it’s not possible to copy them when Outlook is running. (And Outlook has this pesky tendency to keep running even when you think you’ve shut it down, too.)

Checking these boxes not only saves you the trouble of closing Outlook down manually (something you’ll likely forget to do if you have automatic backups scheduled for times when you aren’t using the machine), it makes successful backups a lot more likely.

The first time I tried to run this job, I got the “license expired” warning above, but when I tried it again this morning, it worked with impressive speed. I’d selected my network drive as the destination for the backup, and ION copied 899.58 MB in two minutes and 37 seconds—which seems a lot faster than when I copy the same amount to a USB drive using Replicator. (I’ve never actually clocked that, though, so it might just be my perception.)

The shut-down and restart worked fine, too. I was in the middle of answering a message from Jeff Snader when I decided to test the backup, and Outlook saved my draft just as it would have if I’d shut the program down myself. It was simple and painless.

ION duplicated my file and folder structure when making the backups, which can be annoying to me as a human, given the places Outlook buries its information, but does make it clear where all those files should go when restored. (There’s also an option to store your backups as .zip files, but I presume the file structure is still preserved within that .zip file.)

ION seems like a great tool for the technophobe, while retaining enough features and options to be attractive to the geek. The available online support is tremendous, and the humor demonstrated throughout the website is a nice change from the humdrum tedium of most Windows programs.

I’ll be playing with ION a bit more over the next weeks, and I’ll report later on features like backing up your work data on your home computer (note: do not do this without your employer’s permission).

Technorati Tags: Universe Point,ION backup,monitored backups,Outlook backup

Backing Up Social Networks, Part 2: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 03-28-08

Last week I talked about backups for two different Web 2.0 services: del.icio.us and LinkedIn. I chose those two because they're the ones I use the most often.

This week I'm going to start by talking about Flickr, a popular photo-sharing service that doubles as a social network. I don't post photos to Flickr myself, but the Ur-Guru does. (Yes, lots of them are pictures of me. What did you expect?)

I first noticed the existence of Flickr backup tools a couple of years ago. I had a bit of trouble understanding why you would need them. After all, the photos can't get to Flickr unless you first have them on your computer (or a camera connected to the Internet). Surely if they're worth sharing with the world, you're going to save them on your hard drive or a CD, and they'll get backed up with the rest of your data.

On the other hand, if something happened and you needed to re-upload your photos, remembering which ones you'd had there and which tags you'd used to identify each image could get to be a real challenge. That's why there are programs like Flickredit, a Java-based program for editing, tagging, uploading, and backing up your photos and their associated metadata (copyright info, title, description, tags). If you've put hours into creating this metadata for your Flickr photos, I'd recommend checking it out.

Photobucket, another popular photo-sharing site, lets its pro users back up via FTP download. Regular users can order backup CDs or DVDs from the Photobucket Store.

Enough people who belong to multiple social networking sites have expressed a desire to import their profiles without typing everything over again that there's now a Data Portability Project. There's a long list of the benefits of data portability over on the Use Cases page. They look particularly useful for people who use a lot of job-search or social networking sites.

Interestingly, however, while the list mentions transferring, aggregating, and exporting contacts and other data, it doesn't specifically address backup. If your data is that portable, however, it should be possible to port it onto your hard drive and back it up. And, of course, having the same information duplicated across several sites can also act as a backup, though if you delete something by accident, the deletion might propagate across all the sites. Which leads me to wonder whether there's an “Undo Portability Project” in the making. (Repeat after me: synchronization is not backup.)

It will take a while before the Data Portability Project produces useful results, so remember to check out the possibilities for backing up your profile information and other data before you sign up. If you need to keep your profile info in a Word doc in order to keep from having to re-type it, then that's probably what you should do. And if you can get new messages, photos, and the like from your friends as an RSS feed, remember to subscribe to your own feed in order to keep a copy.

In most cases, anything you post on these sites goes up there at your own risk, and it may well become the property of the social networking site once you put it there.

If you're an avid user of MySpace, Facebook, or other social networks, why not share your method for backing up your profile and other data—or your reason for not bothering.

Technorati Tags: social networks,MySpace,Facebook,Flickr,Photobucket,data portability

Backing Up Social Networks, Part 1: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 03-21-08

I've been using del.icio.us profligately in the last six months or so. It's a handy way to keep track of things I want to read, and things I want other people to read. But it suddenly occurred to me yesterday that whereas my Firefox bookmarks get backed up along with the rest of my critical data thanks to Karen’s Replicator, I had no backup of my del.icio.us bookmarks.

It turns out that it's just as easy to export bookmarks from del.icio.us as to import them: just go to “Settings” and check “export/backup” under “Bookmarks.”

Admittedly, the resulting HTML file is just a long list of links, rather than having the formatting provided by del.icio.us tags, but it beats losing the links altogether if you're still in the middle of using them for research. (Not that I've ever experienced a del.icio.us outage, but it's always possible.)

You can also export your del.icio.us bookmarks to an XML file by pasting the following link into your browser and entering your del.icio.us username and password: http://del.icio.us/api/posts/all. But unless you know what to do with an unformatted XML file, I'd recommend the first method.

Once I had my bookmarks backed up, I started to think about other “social” sites. I've been spending a lot of time answering (and occasionally asking) questions on LinkedIn. A few months ago I asked my network about their backup practices and got enough information to fill up a Reminder column. For today's column, I searched the existing LinkedIn Answers for information about backing up LinkedIn itself.

The easy part is backing up your connections: you can export them to a .csv (that stands for “comma-separated values,” if you wanted to pick up some additional jargon today) file and then import them into Outlook or pretty well any other contact-management program. If you go to your Connections page in LinkedIn and scroll to the bottom, you'll see an “Export Connections” button. This takes you to a page with instructions for exporting to Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo! Mail, or Max OS X Address Book.

That's all well and good, but anyone I'm connected to on LinkedIn is pretty much guaranteed to be in my Outlook contacts already, because I'm scrupulous about not connecting to people I don't know well enough to recommend in some capacity, and if I know you that well, chances are I have your e-mail and phone number already. (And LinkedIn doesn't include phone numbers in their contact info anyway.)

I was more interested in whether I could back up my profile, my recommendations, and my answers to questions. It turns out that it's possible to back up your profile, after a fashion, by saving it as a PDF file. This includes recommendations people have written for you, though not recommendations you have written for others. You can do this with other people's profiles, as well, which may be more useful than just exporting their contact info, if also more cumbersome.

It's possible to copy and paste text out of this PDF, so having it would spare you from re-typing everything if something happened and you had to re-create your profile from scratch. And it would save you some typing if you wanted to re-use the information for another social network.

Curiously, this handy convert-to-PDF feature is not available for your recommendations or your answers. My recommendations page at least shows the full text of the recommendations I've written, so I can use the “print” function to create a PDF version. But the tab with my answers doesn't show the full text (perhaps because I'm inclined to give long answers), and if there's an option to subscribe to your own answers, I haven't seen it. (Besides, the feeds you get from LinkedIn aren't full-text feeds, anyway.) And it only shows the 30 most recent answers.

I guess I know what new features I'll be requesting from LinkedIn!

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn,del.icio.us,social networks,data portability

How do YOU Back up Your Computer? FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-28-07

Here it is the end of another year of backups—almost time to make those special year-end copies of your important data to store with your tax records. I thought I’d do something a bit different for today’s column, so I put a question out to my LinkedIn network asking the people I know what they do for backups. (And no, this is not what “networked backups” means.)

Most of the answers came as private messages, so I won’t quote them in their entirety here, but I’ll list the different tools people are using and write a bit about each, so you can decide which ones might be good for you.

• Amazon S3. The person who mentioned this isn’t using it yet; he’s got a couple of 250 GB external drives. S3 stands for “Simple Storage Service.” It’s fairly inexpensive: $0.15 per GB per month for storage, plus similar rates for data transfer in and out. Jeremy Zawdny has made a list of S3-compatible backup software, since otherwise S3 isn’t really a backup solution, just a storage solution.

• Buffalo TeraStation. This is network storage for people who have serious data to back up. It supports full RAID 5 configuration, which offers protection from disk failure (unless something kills off all the disks at once), and comes in capacities up to 4 TB. It’s big, solid, and expensive: about $700 for the 1 TB version. The TeraStation comes with automated backup software called Memeo AutoBackup, about which I know nothing, but will try to find out more. If you’re a photographer, musician, or videographer, or just run an office that generates masses of data, this could be the product for you.
  
  
• Carbonite got two recommendations—or was it three? It’s been around longer than Mozy, and costs $50/year for unlimited online backup. They’re working on a Mac version, but it’s not available yet. Instead of backing up on a schedule, it backs up files as they change. That’s known as “continuous data protection” and has advantages and disadvantages. One potential disadvantage is slowing down your computer; another is backing up changes that you didn’t want to make. The advantage is that you’ll never lose a whole day’s data. Also, unless you’re working on several large files simultaneously, you won’t have to wait through endless uploads after the first backup is finished.
  
  
• Cobian Backup. This was a new one on me, but it turns out it’s been around for a long time. Cobian is free open-source backup software for Windows. It allows scheduling, encryption, and backup online via FTP. The user interface looks fairly similar to that for SyncBack SE and for Backup4All. I guess there are only so many ways to configure setting up a backup program. There’s a tutorial for version 7 online. (You need Internet Explorer to view it, though.)
  
  
• EMC Retrospect for tape backup. Retrospect comes in a lot of flavors and is compatible with both Vista and Leopard—or so their website claims. The Express version that used to come bundled with external drives is easy enough to use, but stores your data in a proprietary format and doesn’t let you browse through the backed up files. (Norton Ghost stores files in a proprietary format, but at least there’s the Ghost Explorer to let you retrieve individual files.) The Professional version supports tape drives, which most consumer backup products don’t. I’m not a huge fan of tape, but it does provide a way to get your data off-site, and it’s still common in enterprises.
  
  
• Genie Backup Manager comes with two recommendations, one from the owner of the TeraStation and one from a respected IT colleague. It comes in Home and Pro versions. Both of them seem to be pretty comprehensive tools for backing up everything on your computer to just about any medium you could imagine. The site also features a backup encyclopedia. The Home version is $50; the Pro version is $70, and the server version is $400—which is probably a good deal if you have 50 computers to back up. Windows only.
  
  
• Karen’s Replicator. Yes, there is someone besides me in the world who’s a big fan of this free program for Windows file backup and synchronization. I suppose I might be slightly biased in its favor because it was created by a woman, but it’s been doing a great job of backing up my files for years now, and it’s easy to use. Very handy for copying files onto one of those USB external drives mentioned above. It’s less sophisticated than Cobian, so which you use depends on your needs.
  
  
• Mozy. I’ve written about this online backup service before, and it seems it, too, has other fans out there. The free version gives you 2 GB of storage and is available for Vista, XP, Windows 2000, and Mac OS X. The Pro version is available for all flavors of Windows (including servers), but not for Mac. Pro licenses are $3.95/month plus a $0.50/GB/month charge.
  
  
• USB External Drive. Given all I’ve written about such drives already, I don’t think that needs a lot of explaining. But if you have an older machine with USB 1.1, consider getting an XHD with a FireWire connection instead. (Assuming you have a FireWire port, that is. You can use an external drive for manual drag-and-drop backups or with automated backup software.
  
  
• Windows Home Server. This is network storage and then some. I have read good things about WHS, and the person who uses it says it rocks. In addition to doing automatic backups of multiple computers, it acts as a media server. (Sort of like my Maxtor Shared Storage II, but more so; the interface on the MSS-II is designed for simplicity rather than flexibility.) You can install it on a not-too-old computer yourself, if you’re on the geeky side, or you can buy it pre-installed on something like the HP MediaSmart Server. The software costs about $189; the full rig about $600. There’s a good description with screenshots over at Tiger Direct. Best for those with multiple computers and lots of audio and video files.

If you use a backup service or program not listed here, feel free to post it in the comments to the blog or e-mail it to me. I’ll be happy to produce a second list. Indeed, I might try to twist the arms of my Mac-using friends to get a list of different Mac-compatible backup products that people actually use.

Meanwhile, try not to spill champagne on your hard drive when celebrating the New Year, and I’ll see you again in 2008.

Technorati Tags: Cobian,Genie Backup Manager,Windows Home Server,EMC Retrospect,TeraStation,Carbonite,Mozy,Karen's Replicator,Amazon S3,Memeo AutoBackup

We Wish You a Merry Backup: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-21-07

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I'd like to wish you a very merry backup. As I did last year at about this time, I want to urge you to give your friends, family, co-workers, employees, clients (check all that apply), and most of all yourself the gift of backups.

Free Online Backup

If you're strapped for cash, try sitting down with your loved ones and setting up accounts for them on Mozy. Of course, the ones who just got new digital video cameras for Christmas are going to need more than the 2GB of storage that comes with a free account, but for many people, it's plenty. And it has the advantage that once you've set it up, it runs automatically and you don't have to think about it again unless you use up your storage quota or need to retrieve a file. (There are other online backup services, and I'll mention some of them next week, but Mozy is the one I have the most experience with.)

Bear in mind that the first backup with any online service will take several hours, and it's definitely not suitable for people with dial-up connections.

Free Backup Software

I remain a fan of Karen's Replicator for file backups, and also use SyncBack Free, which can be set to copy data from one drive to another whenever the computer is idle. I just recommended DriveImage XML to a client to replace his outmoded version of the now-extinct Drive Image 7. If you've got a little bit of technical know-how, you can download one of these and set it up for someone as a present.

USB Flash Drives

USB sticks (also known as key drives or thumb drives) are ubiquitous and cheap. They don't make good long-term storage, but they're still better than having no second copy of your data at all, and you can easily store them in a safe deposit box away from your office. You can also get them branded with your company logo. Your employees and customers are sure to find them more useful than pens or key chains.

External Hard Drives

Capacities are going up and prices are coming down. Large-capacity external drives make good gifts for people who take thousands of digital photos, have massive music collections, and make videos of every event in their children's lives. (For these people you might even want something that acts as a media server.) All those things can take up a lot of space.

If the intended recipient travels a lot, one of the smaller external drives like the Western Digital Passport, Maxtor OneTouch Mini, or Seagate FreeAgent Go is probably a better choice. The Ur-guru has a good half-dozen of the Passports, all in shiny (fingerprint-attracting) black. I've got one each of the Seagate and Maxtor drives. All of them come with backup software pre-installed.

Rebit

If you have technophobes with new laptops on your list, it could be worth investing in a Rebit. They're pricier than ordinary external hard drives, but they're very simple and they run continuously in the background without noticeably hindering performance. And they're cute. Like the online services, though, Rebit takes a long time to create the initial backup.

Network Drives

If you have multiple computers in one home or office, a network drive may be the way to go. I've written extensively about my Maxtor Shared Storage II (also pictured above--it's the one that looks like a cinder block). Other options include the Buffalo Linkstation and Western Digital's My Book World Edition. The My Book has a little problem with multimedia files, though: it doesn't want you to upload them to the Internet, even if you made them yourself and own the copyright.

Network drives tend to be on the expensive side, not to mention being a bit large to fit in stockings, but they can be very useful.

Merry Backup to all, and to all a good night.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor,Rebit,Western Digital,Seagate,Buffalo Linkstation,Karen's Replicator,SyncBack,DriveImage XML

Revelations from a Reinstall: FileSlinger(TM) Backup Reminder 11-23-07

No, I was not sleeping off Thanksgiving overindulgence instead of writing this backup reminder on Friday morning. I was just absorbed in completing my delayed-and-necessary reinstall before heading to work. I thought a late reminder would be better than none, and now that I'm finished with all but those last little tweaks that drag on for a week or two, I can pass on the backup-related lessons I've learned as a result of this adventure.

1. Set Aside at Least 3 Days

I realize that for many of my readers, reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling your operating system falls into the “Kids, don't try this at home” category. But even those who leave these things to someone else should be aware of just how time-consuming and tedious a job it is.

It took me most of one day to make a list of the software I'd need to put back on the machine when I was finished, make sure I had the most recent versions of Audacity, Firefox, Skype, Karen's Replicator, and all the other freeware programs I use regularly, download all the most recent drivers from HP (the manufacturer of my computer), Epson (the manufacturer of my printer and scanner), and Wacom (the manufacturer of my pen tablet)—and, of course, to back up all my data in as many ways as I could think of. If you're a computer owner preparing to have someone else reinstall your machine, you may be able to do this part yourself and save some money.

The second day was devoted to reformatting the C drive and reinstalling Windows XP Pro. A full format on an 80-GB drive takes about 40 minutes, with about 40 minutes more to install Windows. Except I ended up doing it twice, because the first time around I forgot to delete the restore partition that CompUSA had put onto the drive and which I'd failed to notice and eliminate during my last install. (I'm one of those people who thinks putting your system restore onto the same drive as your system makes no sense. Think about it a bit.)

But even if I hadn't had to do the formatting twice, there are all those Windows updates to download, many of them requiring restarts. And then there are the drivers. Without the correct display driver, for instance, everything on my widescreen laptop looks weirdly stretched out.

Once all the updates were finished and the drivers installed, I had to make a Ghost image so I wouldn't need to do that part over if something went wrong later on.

I also got quite a bit of the software installed on the second day, but not all of it. That put the main focus of the third day onto restoring my data--once I'd made a Ghost image of the installed programs.

Copying documents back onto the C drive was straightforward enough, though it takes a bit of time. Other things have to go back into specific places: the settings for Replicator, for instance, or my Outlook data file. (And I discovered that if I also copy my Outlook Extend.dat file along with the .pst file, Outlook magically remembers all my rules and other settings.) I'm still finding little details of program options that I need to set—that's part of the ongoing tweaking.

The other part of the third day I spent re-configuring backups, in the course of which I made some other discoveries.

2. Don't Get a Rebit if You Have Multiple Internal Drives

I understand from the Rebit people that they're working on this issue, but while I'd known Rebit would only back up my C drive, I hadn't realized that the presence of two internal drives would cause their bare-metal recovery option to fail.

Since I was about to reinstall the machine anyway, I figured I had nothing at all to lose by testing Rebit's PC Recovery CD. So I inserted the CD and rebooted my machine, which brought me into a friendly-looking non-Windows interface designed to lead me through what they call a bare-metal restore. (That means it restores your operating system and software as well as your data.)

Unfortunately, it didn't lead me very far, because it couldn't tell which of my internal drives was which. They are the same make and size, so I probably couldn't tell which was which if you put them in front of me, but there are ways for other programs to tell them apart, because one is set as the “master” drive and one as the “slave” drive. (The operating system goes on the “master” drive, which is Drive0, and if you try to put it anywhere else, you'll have no end of trouble.)

I imagine that Rebit's engineers will be able to fix this problem fairly easily. Not that many laptops have two internal drives, so it's possible none of their users have run into the problem before. But meanwhile, I can't use their restore CD.

3. Some (Backup) Programs Won't Recognize Your Computer after a Reinstall

I had suspected that Rebit might not recognize my newly-reinstalled computer as the same one it had been protecting before, since the log information it had installed before was now gone, along with any recognition signals that go into the registry. (The registry is where Windows keeps all the really important information about how to operate. Don't mess with it. Especially don't mess with it without backing up your whole system first.) And, indeed, when I connected the Rebit, it offered to start protecting my computer. (I said no, not having enough time right then for it to go through that lengthy initial backup sequence.)

What I hadn't expected was problems with Mozy, the free online backup service I use. While I could log into Mozy and see or restore my previous backups, creating a new backup set was a problem. I didn't really want to create a new backup set at all, but to use the old one, but Mozy isn't set up to recognize that even I wouldn't have two computers named “Enheduanna.” Instead of adding new files to the existing backup, it wanted to create an entirely new backup from scratch. (I only discovered this because I kept getting "over quota" warnings that didn't make sense when I did the math on the files in the folders I wanted backed up.) I ended up deleting the old Mozy backup file and starting over—which means that my slow initial Mozy backup is still running. (Though I trust the current prediction of 1 week and 4 days to back up 2 GB is only a product of wildly fluctuating upload speeds, and not an accurate estimate.)

4. Some Drive Problems are Beyond Baffling

More or less immediately after reinstalling Windows, I ran Chkdsk to see whether the reformat had cured my drive problems. The answer: apparently not, as Chkdsk thinks I have 4 KB in bad sectors. This despite the fact that I haven't seen any other sign of drive errors--or not in the C drive, anyway. (I've had some error messages relating to controllers and other problems with my external drives, which may be a matter of their built-in software not being entirely compatible; I'm not sure and need to investigate further.)

A geek friend let me use his copy of SpinRite, a handy tool meant to find and fix problems like bad sectors. It has a good reputation, and my erstwhile colleagues at Kickstartnews.com like it. Since I wasn't feeling well enough to actually do anything with my computer yesterday afternoon, I put the CD in as soon as I'd finished the data transfer and made my final (for this reinstall) Ghost image.

Nine hours and six minutes later, SpinRite woke me out of a sound sleep to tell me it had finished. I looked over its graphical display of all the sectors on my C drive (SpinRite had no trouble at all telling which drive was which, but prompted me to choose the correct drive to test). Every single one was the nice blue color that indicated it had passed the test and was fine. Not one was marked "recovered," much less "defective" or "unrecovered." In other words, my drive is fine. (And it didn't even get all that hot while spinning continuously for 9 hours.)

So what did I find when I started Windows again (at a more civilized hour of the morning) and ran Chkdsk again? I still have 4 K in bad sectors. Except they seem to be illusionary bad sectors. The Ur-Guru is just as baffled as I am, but says that any serious problems with either the drive or the electronics that control it should have shown up in the course of that 9 hours. So maybe I can ignore Chkdsk's 4K.

On the other hand, maybe there really is a strange and subtle problem with my drive. So I have to be even more diligent about creating Ghost images and file backups than usual.

Technorati Tags: SpinRite,Rebit,Mozy,chkdsk

Special Offer on ION Backup through November 2nd

You may remember that I reviewed/beta tested Universe Point's ION backup service back in August. ION's unique selling proposition is monitored backup: they check to be sure your backup jobs have completed successfully.

Today I got the following e-mail from the ION sales department:

Dear Sallie,

Universe Point is currently running an amazing special on ION, the first monitored backup software. You will receive your ION Server or Workstation license for free (up to a $700 value) when you sign up for our monitoring service.

We have salesmen waiting by the phones to help you so give us a call (610-352-1150) or send an email to sales@universepoint.com. This offer ends on Friday, November 2nd, so don't miss this opportunity to protect and secure your data for as little as $30/month.

This special is only available if you call in or email our sales team.

I thought ION was a good product, and Universe Point provides good support (or did for me), so if you're in the market for monitored backup, you might want to take advantage of the special.

And no, I don't get a percentage. (Pity, that.)

Test-Driving the (Maxtor OneTouch) Mini: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-19-07

Yes, I'm two days late with this. Friday morning we were in Dunsmuir. It was raining so hard you couldn't even see Mount Shasta, the Ur-Guru was in an evil mood because of the weather, and we were facing a long drive across the mountains to Eureka to meet my long-lost cousin and his family. So I had just about time to back up the computer to my new Maxtor OneTouch Mini drive, and no time to write about it.

Enough with the excuses, already. I'm home, the sun is shining, and I'm in no hurry to see the inside of my car again for a while.

This was actually the second trip with the Mini drive rather than the Seagate FreeAgent Go drive I bought a few months ago, since I wanted to be able to test it a bit more and contrast the two. Though about the same physical size, and with the same capacity, they look nothing alike. The Mini has a brushed-metal top with a rectangular depression above the Maxtor name, nested in slightly rubberized black plastic with rounded edges and a small but bright white LED which changes in brightness and pattern depending on whether the drive is sleeping, working, or powered down.

Overall, I think the design of the FreeAgent Go drive is more attractive (in spite of that huge yellow light). The OneTouch series, large and small, are supposed to look solid and vault-like, conveying security, whereas the emphasis with the FreeAgent drives is portability. (I'm paraphrasing Jay Pecheck's answer to my question about whether there were any plans to converge the two series of drives.) The hefty OneTouch 4 Plus with its odd trapezoidal profile succeeds at that; trying to make anything as small as the Mini look vault-like risks an excess of cute. But it does make for a matched set when one has both models.

Like the FreeAgent Go, the OneTouch Mini requires two USB ports, one for power and one for data. This is probably the thing I like least about the drives, because if I have both of them connected, it means that my USB hub and the four ports on my laptop are all filled. (If you're curious, the other ports are taken up by the tablet and the scanner, now that the printer is connected to the Shared Storage II.) One thing I can say in favor of those shiny, fingerprint-attracting Western Digital drives the Ur-Guru has is that they only need one USB port apiece. So, since I know it's technically possible to run power and data through the same USB cable, I'm not sure why the Seagate/Maxtor drives don't do that.

The cables are a minor quibble, though. I've had no complaints with the FreeAgent drive since I got it, and the Mini is shaping up nicely. Jay isn't kidding about wanting to associate the Maxtor name with data protection, since the Mini comes with three different options for backup.

Two of the backup options included with the OneTouch Mini (and the OneTouch Plus) are familiar, at least to someone who has used other Seagate/Maxtor products. There's a basic backup program like the one on the Shared Storage II, where you choose the folders to back up and the days you want the backup job to run.

I ran into a small problem when choosing folders: many of the folders on my C drive didn't appear in the list, presumably because Maxtor Manager identified them as hidden or system files, which it doesn't support. In three cases, at least, those identifications are wrong, since I have three folders under C which hold my business documents: ! Author-izer, ! FileSlinger, and ! Podcast Asylum. The exclamation points (which are there to ensure the folders appear at the top of the list in an alphabetical sorting) seem to confuse Maxtor Manager.

I got around this problem by selecting the same folders on my D drive, which contain almost-as-recent information as those on my C drive, thanks to SyncBack—as well as many older files which are no longer active but which I might need if a former client calls. (Apparently Maxtor Manager only worries about exclamation points on your C drive.)

Unlike many software programs, Maxtor Manager's backup doesn't offer you the option of backing up your e-mail or your bookmarks. Since I use Outlook and my .pst file (with all my mail and contact information) is kept in a "hidden" folder (I long since un-hid it), I can't even manually choose to back that data up, but I had no trouble with backing up the archive .pst files on the D drive. Because Outlook locks those files when it's running, though, running the Maxtor Backup program with Outlook open results in a "backup failed" message and a little red icon in the system tray. (The same is true for Quicken data, but the program doesn't appear to have any problems with open Microsoft Office documents.)

The Mini's second backup option, Sync, suffers from the same "blindness" as the backup program, and works much the same way. You get a choice of "Simple Sync," which synchronizes the My Documents folder and "Custom Sync," where you choose your own folders; in my case the choices are "My Documents," "Desktop," "C," and "D." (Some people tend to store a lot of stuff on their desktops, something I never understood but see often enough to understand why Seagate chose to provide that option.)

The difference between "Sync" and "Backup" is that Sync copies—and deletes—files in both directions. The idea is to be able to update your files on one computer, sync with the Mini drive, connect the drive to another computer, and sync again to ensure all the newest files get transferred onto that machine, updating any previous versions. You can choose to sync automatically or manually, and to have the program ask whether you want to replace files or always overwrite. Except for the restriction on the folders you can choose to synchronize, Maxtor Sync appears identical to Seagate's Folder Sync, though I think the Seagate interface is a bit slicker (unfortunate color scheme notwithstanding).

These tools, while useful enough, are nothing really new. The most interesting backup option on the OneTouch drives is SafetyDrill, Maxtor's new drive imaging software. The Ur-Guru and I tested it on a system we'd just reinstalled, and it worked perfectly. To make the image, you go to the "Safety" tab in Maxtor Manager (denoted by a life ring) and choose "Create SafetyDrill(TM) Copy Now." You can ask for reminders to create copies every X days, and you can limit the space your OneTouch drive lets you use for those copies. You can also decide how many of those copies you want to keep (just the most recent, the last two, the latest five, etc).

To restore from your image, you need to boot your machine from the SafetyDrill™ CD which ships with the drive. Once you do that, you find yourself in a Linux environment. Don't mind the X-shaped pointer; everything in SafetyDrill works pretty much the same as in Windows, and there's not much room for confusion, since the only choice you have to make is which image to restore. The idea is to keep you from making mistakes during such a critical operation.

Backup and restore times were comparable to Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate (which we'd just used to make an image before testing SafetyDrill). SafetyDrill is easier to use, at least for those who aren't familiar with DOS and the rather odd way Ghost rearranges your drive letters. I'm thinking of using the Mini to store drive images and keeping the space on the FreeAgent available for straight file copies. It's small enough that it's easy to take out of my office and store in a safe-deposit box (should I ever get one), and the drive has encryption options built in, both password-protection for the entire drive and Maxtor Encryption, which automatically encrypts and decrypts files when you put them in the password-protected folder it creates.

It's always good to put a password on anything it's easy to lose, like small hard drives, USB sticks, PDAs—and laptops, which may not be all that easy to lose, but remain easy to steal. Just back up the password somewhere other than the Mini drive.

I'd give the Mini four stars out of five. I think it needs an e-mail backup option if it's really going to protect people's most critical data without resorting to a complete drive image. And since many laptops are short on USB ports, combining the data and power cables into one would enhance usability and portability. Nevertheless, I think the software bundled with the Mini, in particular SafetyDrill, is a big improvement on the "lite" version of Retrospect that shipped with earlier OneTouch drives.

Finally, I have to wonder why Maxtor is sticking with the OneTouch name, because neither the Mini nor the Plus has a button on it that you can press to run your backups. Admittedly you can back up or sync by right-clicking on the Maxtor icon, but that's actually two touches. Given that the backups run automatically once you set them up, perhaps "Touch Free" would be more accurate.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor, OneTouch Mini, SafetyDrill

I Need a Backup Blogger: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-06-07

Okay, be honest: who forgot to back up last week? Anyone?

That's the "Does anyone actually need me?" question. Because if you've all got your backups automated by now, does it matter whether I actually write this reminder? Do people even notice if I don't produce one?

Not that I'm trying to let myself off the hook for not producing a post last week, mind you, but no one on my less-than-enormous mailing list (backups are never going to win the e-zine popularity contest) wrote to ask where I was last week. (I was at the Podcast Expo in Ontario, California, having a great time but with scarcely time to check my e-mail, never mind compose a Backup Reminder.)

Just because I was on the road doesn't mean I didn't back up. I took my new FreeAgent Go drive with me in a pocket of my laptop case, and it worked just fine. The Ur-Guru took all six of his Western Digital XHDs--and a lot of pictures, which you can see on Flickr if you search under the tag "newmediaexpo2007." We heard more than a few people mention what they did to back up their photos and their audio and video files, but mostly it came down to DVDs (which they were trying to get away from) and external hard drives. Nothing really new there.

Nothing new from Seagate about my dead Shared Storage II, either. Oh, I had a bit of back and forth with the tech support team, who were baffled by the serial number I gave them and asked for a photo of the label and a proof of purchase. Um, guys? My point was that I didn't purchase it at all. After I explained that and sent them everything they asked for, they decided to pass the buck to another division and told me they'd get back to me, which they haven't.

Suggestions for more reliable NAS drives to replace the late Teras are welcome.

I also did a comparison test of Norton Ghost 8 versus TrueImage 9. The Ur-Guru has been using TrueImage on all his systems (actual and virtual) for some time now, and he suggested I try it. First I did a Ghost backup of my hard drive. It worked the way it always does, and took a good while but performed as expected. The TrueImage backup projected that it would take somewhat less time, but I got a strange error message in the middle, even though everything thereafter appeared to work normally and TrueImage told me it had completed the backup successfully.

"I wouldn't trust that backup," the Ur-Guru said. Well, no, not if I had to try to restore my whole system from it. So I'll stick to using Ghost 8 until I find something that works better.

But why TrueImage should work for him--and many others--and not for me, I haven't a clue.

I'll conclude on a humorous note. The Ur-Guru and I attended the Halo 3 launch party in Silicon Valley on September 23rd. The only game I play on my computer is Solitaire, but I knew the guy organizing the party from the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology.

In addition to the gaming competitions, Microsoft was showing off some of its other projects, including the new improved Hotmail and the Silverlight/Popfly combination. We were talking to the Hotmail guy and I asked him what they did about backups.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. "I know the answer to that question," he said, "but I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you."

Testing the GParted Live CD: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 09-14-07

Last week I mentioned that I'd seen an intriguing post on Lifehacker entitled "Copy and Paste your Entire Hard Drive with Two Clicks with GParted." This sounded rather improbable to me, but I wanted to check it out.

There was a small problem with doing so, because the link on the Lifehacker site is broken, but I figured out how to fix it and was able to go over to Sourceforge to download the GParted Live CD .iso file. ("GParted" stands for "Gnome Partition Editor," but that's not of particular interest to the non-geek, and in particular the non-Linux geek.)

At first it seemed a bit strange to be using a Linux tool to back up a Windows drive, though at second thought it actually makes sense. I automatically distrust anything that tries to back up the Windows operating system from within Windows, because the system state keeps changing. I normally make drive images using Ghost 8 after booting my machine from the non-Windows Bart-PE CD. (PE stands for Pre-Environment, another thing you probably don't want to know about. Bart is just the guy who assembled this useful CD.)

Assembling the Bart-PE CD was beyond me; the Ur-Guru made mine. But the GParted Live CD is ready to burn: just start up your CD-burning software, open the .iso file, and burn. Presto: a bootable CD.

So I shut down my computer and booted from the CD, and after selecting the appropriate language/keyboard layout, I was in GParted and it was showing me the partitions on my C drive. Not that it actually said "C drive," mind you. It said "dev/hda1". "Dev" stands for "device," and there's a menu at the top where you get to choose devices. My choices were hda1 (my C drive), hda2 (my D drive), and sda1 (the FreeAgent Go drive). My Maxtor Shared Storage II network drive was conspicuous by its absence.

That was the first problem, because if you copy a partition with GParted, you have to copy the whole thing, and it doesn't get compressed. I don't have 80 GB free on either the D drive or the F drive. So there was no place to put the drive if I copied it.

And even if I'd been able to see the network drive (which has about 200 GB free at the moment), copying and pasting with GParted doesn't just fill in empty space, but reformats the whole drive, thus wiping out anything on there. (It does give you a big warning prompt to prevent you from doing so.)

So yesterday I pulled out my not-yet-recycled X drive, which was completely empty and is an 80 GB drive like my C drive, hooked it up to the USB port, and rebooted with the PArted Live CD. I was then able to select the partition representing the C drive (hda1), hit the "copy" button, select the partition representing the X drive (sda2), hit the "paste" button, and apply the operation.

I was a little surprised that I had to do something more than hit the "paste" button to start the drive copy, though when you're partitioning drives and potentially removing all the data on them, it's not a bad idea to have to take an extra step or two. But even without that, it's definitely more than two clicks, because you have to navigate between partitions.

Still, once you get past the unfamiliar-to-Windows-users (and probably even less familiar to Mac users) interface, it is a straightforward procedure. I hit the "apply" button and off it went.

Copying 80 GB is not a speedy activity even over USB 2.0 hi-speed, but I was about to leave for a client appointment anyway. I started the copying around 9 or 9:30 AM, and when I got home at about 1:30 PM it was finished. I exited GParted, selected "eject and reboot" from the shut down menu, and took a look at the X drive in Windows Explorer.

It was all there: everything on the C drive, including the label "local disk." I'm presuming I could boot from the X drive, now, as long as I set the BIOS on my machine to look for a USB device before checking the local hard drive. And I could use GParted again to copy the partition onto a new machine—though it would have to have identical hardware for me to be confident that there wouldn't be weird issues with drivers for things like sound and graphics cards that would mess it up.

I'm not likely to start using GParted instead of Ghost, if only because I can do the Ghost backups onto my network drive and keep several of them there. But it's free and it requires only a moderate degree of geekiness to use. It also handles just about any conceivable file system, so you should be able to use it on Macs as well as PCs and Linux boxes. And restoring files from the GParted backup doesn't require any proprietary software. (That's the good news and the bad news, as there's no way to encrypt the files and anyone could take that drive and have access to everything in my machine.)

Two clicks is definitely an exaggeration, though. Perhaps I should talk to Lifehacker about truth in advertising.

Technorati Tags: GParted Live CD, Lifehacker

The Shortest Post Since 2003: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 09-07-07

It's 4:20 PM and I've had some very long days this week, with more to follow next week. Somewhere in there I did manage to make a Ghost backup of my system, the first in a long time. (It's getting time—and past time—to do a hygienic reinstall of Enna, though I don't know whether I'll manage it before the Ur-Guru arrives next weekend.) Meanwhile, my five automated file backup systems continue to run smoothly.

I saw an enticing headline on Lifehacker yesterday: "Copy and Paste your Entire Hard Drive with Two Clicks with GParted." That just sounded too good to be true. I haven't had time to find out whether it is yet (I'm downloading the ISO of the GParted Live CD right now), but I discovered that there's actually a substantial collection of backup-related articles on Lifehacker. The Mac readers on this list may find them particularly helpful, as there are several reviews of Mac software from real Mac users, which I'm not.

You can see the whole collection on the Lifehacker Blog. Write in and tell me whether any of the tips are helpful to you, and I'll check GParted out for next week.

Technorati Tags: Lifehacker, backup, GParted Live CD, Norton Ghost

Zoogmo Follow-Up

Dov Sugarman from Zoogmo answered some of the questions I posed in Friday's writeup in his comment on the post, and also provided me some help with connecting to a backup partner and testing the backup and restore features.

For the beta period, at least, there's a “dummy partner” set up to let people test the system. When I selected “MyZoogmo” as a backup partner, I got a dialog box asking me how much space I'd like to offer and telling me how much space was available for my files.

So I selected some files, and noticed that there isn't a “next” button and that you have to go back to the “partners” window to back up or restore a file, but Dov assures me they're going to fix that.

Anyway, it said the backup was running, but that no files were backed up. I'm not at all sure why. But Dov called this morning to walk me through backing up and restoring a single file (except that it became 4 files by the time it was backed up—don't ask me how). And this time it worked.

Zoogmo compares the files in your backup location to the files on your hard drive and offers to restore the ones which are missing. Pretty clever, and also fairly simple.

Dov also assured me that you don't have to set up port forwarding in order to host someone's backup files, even if you have a router. That's definitely a plus.

So we'll see how it evolves.

Technorati Tags: Zoogmo

Connecting Your Backups: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-24-07

Apologies for the late posting of this week's reminder. I had to attend a 4-hour business meeting in the middle of writing it, and I had too many appointments this week to write it in advance. "Those pesky clients," as I sometimes jokingly call them, remain my priority.

I've been popular this week: three different companies have asked me to write about their products and services. Rather than mash them all into one article, though, I'll deal with them separately.

This week's star is Zoogmo, "Your online backup community." If you think that phrase sounds familiar, you're right: I wrote about CrashPlan's similar approach back in February. Whereas CrashPlan works for Mac, PC, and Linux, Zoogmo is Windows-only (XP and Vista).

I confess I rather like the name "Zoogmo," which reminds me of Greek zeugma ("yoke") and refers to a figure of speech most appealing when it connects two unrelated ideas, e.g. "She left in a huff and a carriage."

They also get points for their series of videos about how to use the program. But I do have to add a few caveats to the claim on their home page, however well it ties in with the infinity symbol in their logo:

With Zoogmo you get FREE unlimited backup that automatically runs in the background and lets you protect your data at multiple remote locations that YOU choose.

Free? Well, Zoogmo doesn't charge you. (Their business model? Don't ask me. It's not included in the FAQ.) And presumably your friends and family members won't charge you to use storage space on their computers. But if you use Zoogmo to back up to an external drive, naturally you have to pay for the drive. And your friends paid for their computers, too.

Unlimited? Well, theoretically--if you have an unlimited number of friends with an unlimited number of space on their computers, and don't mind your data scattered to an unlimited number of places. What "unlimited" really means in this context is that Zoogmo doesn't put limits on how much data you can back up. (But maybe I should have the Ur-Guru test it to see how it handles multiple terabytes.)

On the other hand, being able to choose--and know--where your data goes is a good thing.

For some reason, the first time I tried to download the beta, I got the following error message: "Exception in AddUserToXmpp 50 - The operation has timed out." The second time the download started (1.57 MB, which it doesn't say on the download page), but my signup information was not replaced by a "Thanks for downloading, here's what you do next" page.

I was a bit surprised that apparently you can ask any existing participant of Zoogmo whether s/he wants to be a backup partner. Though I'm not sure any of the people on the list right now are real people, or there for the sake of example. I'm not entirely sure I want to find out, either. Asking random people to be your "friend" is bad enough. Asking them to store your data strikes me as nothing short of insanity, even if Zoogmo's claim that your backup partners "won't even be able to tell what kind of files you are storing on your computer." (Seems to me there could be some pretty serious liability issues between partners, even so.) But for the sake of example, since the program wants you to pick a partner, I selected the name of the Zoogmo team member who sent me the info about the product.

Once you have a partner--or several--you can move on to deciding what you want to back up. You can do this by category (My Documents, e-mail and contacts, Firefox bookmarks/IE favorites, etc) or by file. The default seems to be to check everything. For some reason, though, when I started unchecking items, I got a warning saying that I was attempting to back up more data than I had agreed with my partners.

Well, I hadn't agreed anything with my so-called partners, because I was never prompted to enter into an agreement with them. Apparently Zoogmo makes that request to the partner for you, as a closer look at the "partners" window shows a "waiting for approval" note next to the name of the chosen partner. (Guess I should have watched the rest of those videos.)

The interface is straightforward, as the only possible activities beyond choosing partners and files/categories are "backup" and "restore." But as with ION's file transfer function, you have to set up port forwarding on your router in order to offer storage space to your partners. There's a link to information about how to do this under the "advanced" tab. (And for anyone who's curious, their proposed port for access is not the same as ION's, so you could use the two together.)

A word on the subject of port forwarding and routers. If you have broadband Internet access (cable or DSL) and don't have a router, get one. It will save you from thousands of automated attacks against your system, because every router builds in firewall protection. Most SOHO users don't need separate (expensive) hardware firewalls, but there's no point volunteering to join a botnet. And having a router is way less intrusive than using one of those irritating so-called Internet security packages. But I digress.

It's not clear what happens if you have several backup partners. Does all your data get copied to each of them, or does Zoogmo just move on to the next after the first one is full?

So I can't provide a live field test today, but Zoogmo certainly looks as though it would work for the right people under the right circumstances. The right people being folks who trust each other and all have high-speed connections and plenty of hard drive space. Oh, and whose computers are running most of the time, or at least likely to be running at the time any given partner needs to restore something from a backup. It might be especially worthwhile for those who don't trust online backup services (or don't trust the governments who can demand access to their data) but who still want some offsite backup.

If anyone starts using Zoogmo, let me know how it works for you--or doesn't. You can comment here in the blog, or e-mail me: sallie [at] fileslinger [dot] com.

And as a bonus for waiting so long to get this, you get an extra link, this time to the CNET community newsletter, for members' suggestions about the best way to back up and restore your computer to the same condition it was in before the crash.

Keep an Eye on Your Backups: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-10-07

I’ve been beta-testing Universe Point’s ION Backup this week, and after sending so much feedback to the development team, I feel almost as though I’d already written the review. Because the program is still in beta, some of the things I mention may have changed by the time the release candidate (that’s the official version) comes out.

The installation package for ION is a modest 23 MB. If that doesn’t seem modest to you, DriveClone Pro is 96 MB and TrueImage Workstation is 155 MB. On the other hand, my standby Karen’s Replicator is less than 2 MB, so perhaps “mid-size” is the best description for ION.

In order to install the program, you need a customer ID, which the company supplies when you sign up for the trial or buy a copy. This registers your “station” (the computer you are backing up) with Universe Point. That’s important both for monitoring and for site-to-site file transfers.

I have to say that both the development and support teams at Universe Point are really on the ball. The support forum has extremely detailed instructions, with lots of screen shots, on how to do things like set up port forwarding so you can receive file transfers. There are links to the support forum from within the program, particularly in the beginner’s interface, and also links within the different windows to answer questions like “What should I name my backup?” and “What should I back up?” (Note to Universe Point: “Back up” as a verb is two words.)

Because I have my screen set to display items at 120 DPI, some of the text in ION runs off the screen or otherwise displays a bit oddly. I’m assured that the development team is working on ways to deal with this. The high resolution of modern computer screens means that fonts at the usual 96 DPI setting are hard to read, and I don’t like squinting. The down side to this eyesight-saver is that not everything displays properly, particularly in fixed-size windows. (If you want to increase readability in Windows XP without decreasing screen resolution, go to Control Panel | Display | Settings | Advanced and select 120 DPI from the drop-down menu.)

When you start ION, you get a welcome page which offers you a choice of “simple view” and “detailed view.” I chose the detailed view and set up a backup job by clicking the “backup” button.

You can choose between full, incremental, and differential backups, select which items you want to back up (including the System State), and then choose the local or LAN location for your backup. ION replicates your file and folder structure exactly, which is not ideal for me, but does make it easier to find the backup copy of a file, because it will be in the same place in the backup location that it is on the original computer (e.g. C:\!FileSlinger\!Clients). That file structure is packed into a folder with the backup name and the date on it. ION sa