Things have been just a trifle busy here at FileSlinger™ Central lately. Not that this is really an excuse for not producing a Backup Reminder last week and being late with this week’s, but it’s the best I’ve got. I hope you remembered to back up anyway.
The web hosting account for FileSlinger.com was due to expire on November 18th, and I decided that rather than renew my account with iPowerWeb, I would move the domain and the site over to GoDaddy. I was happy with iPower for years, and I will say that they were quite reliable in terms of uptime. But I had a couple of different issues with them.
First, they didn’t allow hosting more than one domain on the same account, which many similarly-priced hosts do. (GoDaddy does, and so does DreamHost, where the Podcast Asylum site lives—as does the Ur-Guru’s world-famous home office.)
Second, while domain registration is supposed to be bundled into the hosting account, and renewal is supposed to be automatic—this year it wasn’t. I had to pay extra to renew the domain, and I had to do it manually.
And then they raised the price.
So enough was enough. I signed up for a domain transfer and hosting account with GoDaddy, where I have three domains registered already. (Two of them don’t have websites yet.)
I backed up the contents of my website onto my hard drive and began the transfer process. It appeared to be working fine. Unlike my previous hosting company, Web750 (about which the less said, the better—for them), iPower made no attempt to hold my domain hostage or make me pay an extra fee for moving it. They were very cooperative, for which I give them credit, because switching hosts is difficult if the old host doesn’t want to let go of your domain.
While it was very simple to move the contents of my website over, and the domain transfer appeared to be complete, for some reason the fileslinger.com domain wasn’t resolving. As far as the rest of the Internet was concerned, the domain didn’t exist. So of course all mail addressed to my fileslinger.com accounts bounced (leading to panic among some of my friends), and no one could visit my website.
Note to self: do not switch domain registrars the day before you’re supposed to come out with a backup reminder.
When I alerted GoDaddy support to the problem, they fixed it right away. In fact, they helped me solve another problem without saying “RTFM,” which they had every right to do. (For those who have not encountered that initialism, it stands for “Read The Freaking Manual.” Less polite terms also starting with “F” may be substituted.)
By the time that got taken care of, it was Monday and I had clients to deal with, as well as resuming a discussion with Diskeeper support about the product I’d planned to write my next Reminder about. And setting up my new printer.
My beloved Epson Stylus Photo 1280 had finally reached an intolerable level of unreliability. After it left streaks all over my niece’s birthday card, I ordered an Artisan 800 all-in-one. Beautiful machine, even though the ink charger sounds like something out of Star Trek. I’ve been adjusting its settings and testing out its capacities (like printing on CDs).
And I came across a setting I certainly didn’t expect to see on a printer: “Back Up Data.” Huh? I thought. What data? Printers do have memory in them—to allow for background printing—but they don’t normally store data.
The data that’s on your Compact Flash or Smart Card, that’s what data. There are two card-reader slots on the Artisan, and a USB port, as well. So without ever turning on your computer, you can not only print your photos, but back them up onto an external hard drive. This may be faster than transferring them onto your computer first, though it does mean there’s one less copy.
I haven’t tested this feature, in part because all my USB hard drives are connected elsewhere—except Vesta the Vault, and I’m not sure I could enter the password directly from the Artisan’s control panel. (And if I can’t, it will probably blow up or something, because the darn thing is classified as a weapon.) It appears to be a quite straightforward process, however, though many users may only discover it by accident, as I did.
In any case, I’m delighted to know that Epson has backups on the mind, and I’ll be back next week with more backup news.
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