Backing up crucial files

I have a few friends that I help out with computer related issues and the most common issue I seem to help them with is recovering lost information.  

Here are a couple of items to consider when choosing a back up plan.

• How much data is absolutely crucial? Megabytes or Gigabytes? 

• Back up to an HD (internal or external) or the Cloud? 

• Is the backed up data encrypted?

• Is the back up scheduled?

• Does the back up work for both Mac and Windows platforms?

• Is there an app for your back up?

I use a product called Mozy. It meets all my needs.

If you only have a few Gig or less of crucial info to back up, there are a couple of free apps that you can download. You can get two Gigabyte free to use for ever.

If you have more than a few gig of data you want to back up, you can then decide if you want to upgrade to one of their paid plans.  Like anything else, the more you want to back up, the more it will cost regardless of vendors.  Mozy also offers business/enterprise solutions if you happen to need that functionality as well.

Here is some info directly from Mozy's site.

If you're looking to keep your online data safe and secure, Mozy is the right choice for you. Not only has the entire Mozy business completed a SOC 1 SSAE 16 Type 2 audit and received ISO 27001 certification, but Mozy's online backup product also uses rock solid file encryption to ensure your information is secure on your computer, during transit and in our data centers.

 As soon as you select a file for backup, Mozy encrypts the file right on your laptop, desktop or server to giving you immediate protection with the same encryption standard used by the military (256-bit AES encryption.) Files are transferred to Mozy data centers through an SSL-encrypted tunnel, ensuring that your files are doubly encrypted during transit. This is the same technology used by banks to ensure safe delivery of information online.

With multiple data centers across the world, you can be sure that your data is stored in a remote location in the right place for you, ready to be restored if and when they're needed. Files at rest in the data center also reside in an encrypted state, meaning that your important information has never been safer. With a secondary copy of your data remotely stored and encrypted, you have complete protection in case anything happens to your computer or laptop.

 Mozy customers also have the choice to let Mozy manage the encryption process for them (activating a 448-bit Blowfish encryption key) or you can manage your own key using military-grade 256-bit AES to secure your data during storage.

Regardless of how you choose to manage your information, Mozy has your back when it comes to encryption and security.

Give it a shot and try MozyHome for free. Once you get to their site you see a log in box, just below the log in box is a link. It will say "Don't have an account? Sign up now."  Click on the "Sign up now" link to register for your free trial.



Speaking of free,  try an Amazon Prime membership for free as well. Free two-day shipping on millions of items, unlimited instant streaming of 41,000+ movies and TV episodes, and over 350,000 Kindle titles to borrow for free.  Not a bad deal!

XP Backup Utility from Connected Solutions

Sometimes simplicity is the order of the day. We’ve all seen complex backup solutions for use in Windows. They can be expensive, cumbersome, and time consuming to setup. And then there’s Microsoft’s answer, the “Backup Utility”. This disaster has, in the past, left users scratching their heads for more reasons than one. Not only is the built-in Windows Backup Utility a pain to use, it’s format has changed from one version of Windows to the next, making it difficult for the average user to restore from a backup created using a previous version of Windows.

So you’re cheap and lazy, but realize you still need to backup some of your most valuable files. All that clutter you have on your desktop that you keep telling yourself to organize. Those pictures you’ve been meaning to make copies of before your next life-altering hard drive failure. And then there’s the stuff you never think about until you don’t have it. When’s the last time you backed up your Internet Explorer favorites? Yeah, that’s what I thought. We’re all guilty of putting these things off. So what should you do about it? Connected Solutions to the rescue!

With a little help from Simon Sheppard’s website (http://ss64.com/nt) we’ve developed a simple backup solution. This is nothing more than a batch file which will prompt you for the drive letter of your backup device and then make copies (uncompressed) of “My Documents”, “Favorites”, and “Desktop” of the current user to that backup device. USB Thumb drive? No problem. Firewire external hard drive? No problem. Network storage device? No problem. Anything that has a drive letter will work (assuming sufficient storage space is available on the target device.) This utility will create a folder on the target drive called “Backup”. Within that folder it will create a subfolder for each backup event and name the individual folders based on date, time, and username. For example, “2009-11-20-0946-BillyBob.Jones” (without the quotes) would be the name of the folder created when BillyBob Jones’ backup ran on November 20th 2009 at 9:46AM. Pretty simple, huh?

Currently this is only available for Windows XP (and it may work on Windows 2000, too, but we haven’t tested it). In the near future we plan to create a version for use with Vista and Windows 7.

REM Backup utility developed by Connected Solutions (www.Solutions29.com) 11/04/2009

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo This backup utility will make a copy of the following folders on the backup drive of your choice:
echo My Documents
echo Favorites
echo Desktop

echo Default location PST files (MS Outlook)
echo.
echo To ensure a successful backup all open programs must be closed now...
echo.
echo.
Pause
FOR /F "TOKENS=1* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET CDATE=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 eol=/ DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET mm=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ eol=/" %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET dd=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET yyyy=%%B

REM The following code was found on Simon Sheppard's website, http://ss64.com/nt/
SETLOCAL
For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=1234567890 " %%a in ("%time%") Do set "delims=%%a%%b%%c"
For /f "tokens=1-4 delims=%delims%" %%G in ("%time%") Do (
Set _hh=%%G
Set _min=%%H
Set _ss=%%I
Set _ms=%%J
)
:: Strip any leading spaces
Set _hh=%_hh: =%

:: Ensure the hours have a leading zero
if 1%_hh% LSS 20 Set _hh=0%_hh%

Echo The time is: %_hh%:%_min%:%_ss%
ENDLOCAL&Set _time=%_hh%%_min%
REM End of code found on Simon Sheppard's website, http://ss64.com/nt/

SET /P TargetDriveLetter=Enter the drive letter of your backup device:
SET date=%date:~10,4%_%date:~4,2%_%date:~7,2%_%_time%_%UserName%
md %TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Desktop\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\Desktop\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Favori~1\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\Favorites\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\MyDocu~1\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\My Documents\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\OutLook Files\*.*" /e
echo.
echo.
echo Your backup is complete
echo Your backup location is: %TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%
echo.
echo This utility developed by Connected Solutions (www.Solutions29.com)
pause

Feel free to copy the code above into a batch file or just download a zipped one from here.

If you would like to modify this utility please leave all credits and comments in place. Hey, it's free, don't act like you have to steal it!