There's simply no reason for any computer user to lose important data.
My hat is off to the tech companies that provide the hardware, software, and services we rely on every day. From Microsoft's Shadow Copy feature in Windows Vista (though only partially implemented in the Home Edition), down to the smallest Web start-ups offering free and easy online storage (though you have to pay for unlimited storage capacity), they have made tremendous strides in helping to keep our valuable data safe. Now it's up to us to take advantage of these great products and services.
For full backups, image is everything
Start with a complete image backup of your hard drive using a program such as Acronis True Image Home. The program is so much easier to use than the backup utility built into Windows Vista and XP that it's worth spending $50 to keep it beyond the 15-day trial period. I create an image backup of the hard drives on three of the five PCs on my home network once or twice a year, depending on how much use they're getting. (The other two are test systems that are constantly reset to their defaults anyway.)
It can take five or more 4.7GB DVD discs to back up a big-capacity hard drive, so you may want to consider buying an external hard drive to simplify the process. Just remember to keep the external drive in a location other than next to your PC to prevent both being damaged or stolen at the same time.
Go casual for your day-to-day file backups
Over the years I have gotten into the habit of duplicating my important files on a regular basis: either by e-mailing them to myself and setting my mail server to save copies of all mail after it is downloaded to the PC; sending them in batches via ftp to the Web-server storage that's included in my ISP account; or burning a copy of the 1GB USB thumb drive I use as my primary file-storage location to a DVD. (Adding the storage folders on the thumb drive to my Save As dialog boxes in Office took only a couple of minutes.)
Online backup fills in the gaps
You might think that these occasional image backups and regular, informal file backups would have me covered. But recently I faced a situation where neither backup approach was appropriate. One of my three XP machines is showing signs of old age and may be ready to cash in its chips. I have gotten more than my money's worth out of this trusty, old hunk of metal, which served as my primary work system for three years before being converted to a test PC about three years ago. In that capacity it has been through the wringer: I've downloaded, installed, and uninstalled dozens of programs onto its 30GB hard drive.
Before I consign it to a shelf in the garage with the other PC wrecks, I need to get my personal files off its hard drive (which I'll probably pound a few nails through before I take it to our local electronics recycler). I've plugged at least two different digital cameras into this system, and several different audio players, all of which seem to use their own software. I've also used at least a dozen other applications at one time or another. Who knows where all these programs have put my images, audio files, and various documents and spreadsheets?
Instead of hunting down all these files before pulling the plug on the PC, I signed up for a free account at IDrive, which makes it easy to ferret out these files. The free version of the service gives you 2GB of storage with no limitations on the number of backups and restores. It also lets you perform continuous backups as frequently as every 10 minutes, and it doesn't delete your files on its servers after a period of time, as other free backup services do.
In the past, I have tried many online-backup services, including industry-leaders XDrive (now owned by AOL) and Mozy, both of which offer free limited-storage versions. But IDrive is the most straightforward of the three to sign up for and use.
Getting started with IDrive requires only a name, an e-mail address, and a password. You're given the option to use IDrive's encryption key, or to create your own based on a separate password of your own devising. After you download the client program used for your backups, you select the file locations and types you want to back up, or choose the service's automatic option, which includes the usual file-storage folders on your system.
Choose IDrive's default encryption for your backup files, or devise a key (password) of your own.
(Credit: IDrive)Backing up the personal files on my old XP PC went smoothly, though it took just over five hours to transmit 450MB of files to the service. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to use more than the 2GB available for the free account, so I upgraded to the IDrive Pro service, which costs $5 a month or $50 a year. The Pro account lets you manage several accounts with a single log-in and from one console, though each PC has to have its own account. The exception to this is if you need to restore the backup of a crashed PC to another (the scenario I'm anticipating I'll have to use someday).
View the progress of your IDrive online backup as it proceeds, including the estimated time remaining.
(Credit: IDrive)While the initial IDrive backup can take several hours if you're saving hundreds of megabytes of data, subsequent backups are much faster, and the service's automatic-backup settings make them nearly transparent. You can also sync online files with your local PC, and view your files and other account information from any Internet-connected PC via its Web interface.
Tomorrow: registry freeware you shouldn't compute without.
For the next three weeks, office workers across the country will have visions of buzzer-beaters dancing in their heads.
It's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament time, and that means brackets will be zipping through e-mail systems in organizations large and small. There are dozens of sites that let you make your tournament choices online, whether to test your basketball-prediction acumen against the masses, or to recruit friends and coworkers in a private pool.
You can even use Google's Basketball Bracket Battle gadget to place your choices on your iGoogle page. After you select the "Create a bracket on iGoogle" link, the gadget is added to your iGoogle page, and you're invited to join a league, or to form a league of your own. Clicking the first option leads to a window where you give your bracket a name, or enter an existing league, which requires a password. The gadget lets you complete as many as five separate brackets, which you can share with friends and coworkers. The brackets weren't available as of 9 p.m. PDT last night, so I can't tell you anything about the selecting your winners, but you're also asked to predict the score of the championship game. You have to complete your picks by the start of the first game this Thursday.
DIY approach to basketball brackets
I got the fever early and spent part of my weekend creating my own brackets on Google Docs. First, I added rows for the first and second rounds, Regionals, Semifinals, and Championship. Since I followed the standard custom of putting two regional brackets side by side, I made mirror images, with the Midwest and West regions on one side, and the East and South regions on the other. Then I created the "brackets" themselves by adding lines to the bottom and sides of the appropriate cells by clicking the Borders icon on the toolbar and selecting one of the eight options.
Create your 'brackets' by choosing the appropriate border option from the Google Docs toolbar.
(Credit: Google)After I entered the seeds in each of the four brackets, the worksheet was ready to share with everyone, or a select few. I made it available to everyone by clicking the Publish button in the top-right corner of the window, which generates a URL you can send to anyone. I can also limit who has access to the brackets by clicking Share and choosing "to fill out a form" under Invite people on the left, and then the Start editing your form button.
Share your NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets with friends and coworkers by converting it into a form.
(Credit: Google)The only problem with the form approach is that you have to create a separate question for each game, and since you don't know who'll be playing after the first round, you have to use text fields rather than checkboxes or a two-item list; the other choices--paragraph text and multiple choice--aren't suitable in this instance. Still, the form approach simplifies management by making it easy to collect everyone's choices. It's also an effective alternative to the Microsoft Word approach to conducting surveys that I described last week. (My thanks to the readers who pointed out the online-survey technique).
After you complete the form questions, or if you share the worksheet as is, you add the e-mail addresses of your "collaborators", and decide whether they can invite others. You're also given the options to make the file read-only, or include its URL.
Now that you've set up your pool and made your picks, you can get back to work--at least until tipoff on Thursday.
Tomorrow: reduce your PC's power consumption.
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