Between the vicious migraine I picked up in Los Angeles and my hot date with TurboTax, I didn’t have time to write my review of Buffalo’s CloudStor for this week. (Though I did use it while I was out of town, and my tax return is getting backed up onto it right now.) I did, however, manage to come up with some rules for the Rebit 5 CD giveaway so that my extra copies of the Rebit software don’t go … [Read more...]
Rebit 5: Better Than Ever, but Not Quite as “Ridiculously Simple”
I received my new Rebit 5 device, a charmingly slim, black 500 GB portable hard drive, on March 21st. (There was a time when Rebit wanted to get away from selling hardware, but that idea seems to have fallen by the wayside.) The first time I tested a Rebit drive, the software was pre-installed on the drive. Also the second time. And the third time, with the SaveMe drive I got for my mother. … [Read more...]
Too Late to Back Up?
Last week I got a call from someone whose name I won’t reveal but whose story should be a lesson to everyone reading this. The person in question is someone who uses her laptop continually, but doesn’t know that much about it. “My computer went black,” she said. “Totally black?” I asked. “No, it has white letters on it. It says ‘Operating system not found.’” “Oh,” I said intelligently. “That’s … [Read more...]
Backing Up the Crazy Nikon Lady
My mother has attracted quite a following on Picasa since acquiring her D90 in 2008. She takes pictures everywhere: the grocery store, the airport, the hospital, the back alleys, the freeways, the kitchen, the dog park… She’s also started to fill up the hard drive on her much-abused Sony Vaio laptop now that she shoots in RAW (which Nikon calls NEF) format. Despite a growing facility with Adobe … [Read more...]
Just Add Water? Memeo Instant Backup
When I first heard about Memeo Instant Backup, I objected that no program that backed up your entire hard drive could possibly be “instant.” Hard drives are getting bigger and bigger, so copying them takes longer and longer. Robert Phillips explained to me that the “instant” part refers to the fact that the backup process starts instantly: as soon as you install the product, it begins backing you … [Read more...]