Backups

A new report is out that suggests a fault may exist in Apple's Time Machine service, causing internal drives to be automatically and silently added to Time Machine's exclusion list, resulting in the service not backing up the data on these drives and not notifying the user of the change.

As outlined on Diglloyd's Mac Performance Guide blog, this problem appears to be situational to setups where many internal drives are being managed. To see this happen, be sure one of your internal drives is mounted and available, and then add it to the Time Machine exclusion … Read more

Time Machine is Apple's built-in backup solution for OS X that creates hourly backups of all files on the system. Unlike a clone of the drive, the backups are not directly bootable, but they can be used to restore any instance of your OS installation and file structure to the drive. This makes it convenient for restoring data to a recently repaired system, migrating to a new one, or undoing a recent configuration change that is causing problems.

This backup solution is quite useful to have and is easy to set up, but there may be instances where Time … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series, for the other parts, check out the related stories. This post was updated on March 29, 2013, to add more information on backing up.

One of a storage device's most important roles, if not the most important, is to keep the information stored on it safe, especially from hardware failure. Redundancy and backup are the two popular types of data protection. They are not the same, however, and it's important to understand the differences between the two.

In a nutshell, redundancy in consumer-grade digital storage means using … Read more

Backups: are they really necessary? Absolutely. Are they a hassle? Very often, yes. Do they cost an arm and a leg? Sometimes -- but not today.

Through tomorrow, AppSumo is offering a one-year subscription to Backblaze backup service for $25. (That's for one PC; you can buy multiple subscriptions at that price for additional systems.) Normally that would cost you $50, or $5 per month if you elected not to prepay.

Backblaze competes with the likes of Carbonite and Mozy, offering continuous, automated backup of all your data. Like Carbonite, Backblaze affords unlimited space. And its client software (available … Read more

Editor's note: This temporary deal has expired and is no longer available.

One key lesson we can all learn from Hurricane Sandy: you can never have too much backup power, especially when you're relying on your mobile phone for communication, information, or even just light.

Actually, backup power comes in handy in all kinds of situations -- like, say, when you need to show your electronic boarding pass at the gate and your phone just ran out of juice.

Most mobile charges are flat, black, and ugly. Not so this CNET Exclusive: through tomorrow, November 1, you can … Read more

Who says you can't get something for nothing?

For the next 10 days, you can not only get something for nothing, you can get double. For this Cheapskate exclusive, Pogoplug is offering 10GB of cloud storage free of charge. Regular folks off the street get a mere 5GB.

Pogoplug, of course, makes the popular eponymous gizmos that plug into your router, effectively turning any USB drive into a network- and Internet-accessible storage. But the company is also pushing hard to become a cloud player, as evidenced by this latest offering.

That 10GB of space isn't quite as versatile … Read more

Seagate announced today a new version of the Backup Plus portable drive designed especially for Macs.

The new Backup Plus family was first introduced back in June, initially available for Windows. The drive offers USB 3.0 and comes with the HFS+ file system out of the box.

The Backup Plus family replaces Seagate's GoFlex family but still offers a flexible design thanks to the Universal Storage Module (USM) standard, which basically allows you to use any type of connection standard (USB, FireWire, eSATA, or even Thunderbolt) just by swapping out the adapter part of the drive. The drive … Read more

Nokia PC Suite is a collection of tools that allows your Nokia handset to connect to your Windows machine and sync data, back up your phone's contents, push software updates to your phone, as well as share files between desktop and mobile phone. Supporting a long list of Nokia phones, Nokia PC Suite is easy to install and launch on your Windows machine.

The interface used by Nokia PC Suite is simple, using a set of icons to show different tasks. When a phone is connected, it appears with its status in the left pane of the software; the … Read more