Backup your PC!

20/07/2007 by orientfan.

I have been dreading my laptop dying, requiring the use of that most useful command, FDISK.

Up until a couple of weeks ago I was backing up manually to DVD-RW. It’s not ideal at all as

1. You have to remember to back up
2. You have to faff about dragging and dropping your files
3. There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to read from the DVD in, say, a years time
4. You have to remember what files you are supposed to be backing up each time
5. Sods law your PC/laptop will die an hour before you intend to back up

I’ve been looking into companies that provide backups over the internet, you basically back up your data over the internet to their servers and, if you need to, restore the files from there after a catastrophic data blowback incident.

Most of them offer a free trial but, being the tight git prudent chap that I am I wanted it free and I wanted as many features as possible [tech time - open file support and file versioning].

So, after much testing, I can heartily recommend www.idrive.com. You get 2GB free and that should be more that enough for your documents and important photos.

You can access your files from their web site, so if you are at a friends PC and want to show them your pic, just log in and download them to their PC. It really is good.

Bearing in mind I am not paying for this I sent them an email asking a question about their software and got a reply within 5 minutes.

OrientFan - staying up late so you don’t have to.

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