OT online back up

wrote in message

In any case,
don't pack all of your backup media in the same piece of luggage...



the idea that ALL his stuff could get stolen is why I wondered about online
storage ...

He's an aspiring writer and by the time he heads home his laptop will
contain hundreds of hours of work, not so much "sensitive' stuff as just
plain work. Since it's all text and small files I had him install an FTP
client and gave him a pw-protected folder on my web site where he can upload
those files. We're more concerned about theft than drive failure, but
I'll give him an external drive for a trip present. I have a Maxtor
that comes with 'ghost-like' cloning software that stores an image of the
entire HD in case of drive failure and also has pretty cool software for
syncing two machines, if you work on the same files on both, and simple
back-up of defined folders too. It's physically small and light weight,
combined with FTPing his most precious stuff to the website it will cover
most threats, stored seperately from the laptop


thanks all for the input

On Mon, 05 May 2008 14:53:07 GMT, "Larry L"
wrote:

the idea that ALL his stuff could get stolen is why I wondered about online
storage ...

Carbonite, Larry. Accessable wherever you are. Complete electronic
backup.

"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 05 May 2008 14:53:07 GMT, "Larry L"
wrote:

the idea that ALL his stuff could get stolen is why I wondered about
online
storage ...

Carbonite, Larry. Accessable wherever you are. Complete electronic
backup.




That does look good, Dave ..... though I admit to a bit of worry about ANY
program that " works quietly and continuously in the background" I've
encountered a few making a similar claim that sometimes got very noisy and
obnoxious

On Mon, 05 May 2008 15:51:54 GMT, "Larry L"
wrote:


"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 05 May 2008 14:53:07 GMT, "Larry L"
wrote:

the idea that ALL his stuff could get stolen is why I wondered about
online
storage ...

Carbonite, Larry. Accessable wherever you are. Complete electronic
backup.




That does look good, Dave ..... though I admit to a bit of worry about ANY
program that " works quietly and continuously in the background" I've
encountered a few making a similar claim that sometimes got very noisy and
obnoxious

If this is a full backup scheme/system/service, it has a big plus and a
big minus - if something goes big-time wrong, you got everything, but if
one important file gets whacked, you might HAVE to get everything...and
I'd offer that if it works "continuously," the connection must be
"continuous" for a least-resources-possible operation (and if the
connection isn't continuous, having the BU data stored in a local cache
ain't gonna help a whole hell of a lot in the event of theft or HW
failure...).

HTH,
R

On May 5, 9:51 am, "Larry L" wrote:

That does look good, Dave ..... though I admit to a bit of worry about ANY
program that " works quietly and continuously in the background" I've
encountered a few making a similar claim that sometimes got very noisy and
obnoxious

Carbonite looks very nice. I may recommend it to family and friends. I
do, however, resonate with some of Larry's hesitations. I'm a geek and
I like to set up and control my technical environment.

Larry, you set up an FTP server, so you must be technically capable.
Did you do this on Unix? If so, a very nice alternative solution would
be to set up a Subversion server. This would not only back up your
son's file's but also keep a change history in case he wants to access
older versions. And there are some nice Windows clients for Subversion
available.

http://subversion.tigris.org/

This may be a bit more technical than you or your son want to get, but
it's a nice system. That said, FTP is tried and true, nothing wrong
with it.

Jon.

One of the nice things about Apple's OS X operating system is an
automatic incremental backup utility called Time Machine. When your
computer is connected to an external drive it automatically backs up
everything on whatever schedule you want, and you can retrieve files
from whatever backup date you want. The backup doesn't take long because
it's incremental -- saving only the recent changes. The user interface
is pretty cool, too. Unix has had incremental backup for ages, and Time
Machine may built on top of that utility because OS X has Unix under the
hood.

BTW, I just posted this to annoy Jon. :-)

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

On May 5, 10:28 am, rw wrote:

BTW, I just posted this to annoy Jon. :-)

Gee thanks...now the rest of my day is ruined...

Jon.
PS: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2...n_homedir.html

On Mon, 05 May 2008 14:53:07 GMT, "Larry L"
wrote:


wrote in message

In any case,
don't pack all of your backup media in the same piece of luggage...



the idea that ALL his stuff could get stolen is why I wondered about online
storage ...

He's an aspiring writer and by the time he heads home his laptop will
contain hundreds of hours of work, not so much "sensitive' stuff as just
plain work. Since it's all text and small files I had him install an FTP
client and gave him a pw-protected folder on my web site where he can upload
those files. We're more concerned about theft than drive failure, but
I'll give him an external drive for a trip present. I have a Maxtor
that comes with 'ghost-like' cloning software that stores an image of the
entire HD in case of drive failure and also has pretty cool software for
syncing two machines, if you work on the same files on both, and simple
back-up of defined folders too. It's physically small and light weight,
combined with FTPing his most precious stuff to the website it will cover
most threats, stored seperately from the laptop

A (physically) small flash drive or two might be a better _traveling_
gift than an external HD (but if you do get him one, remember that he
may need an extra plug adaptor set) and since the files are text, it's
unlikely that he'd ever fill a flash up. Some seem to forget that while
a remote BU service is, technically, ready to be accessed from anywhere,
having that access _from_ anywhere isn't guaranteed. In certain cases,
one might not want to access anything - for example, I'd not recommend a
US citizen access such a service from Cuba, regardless of the ability to
do so. Then, in certain areas of China, it might be impossible to
access it. IMO, I'd look at remote BU as a redundant BU rather than a
primary, esp. in the case of traveling.

TC,
R


thanks all for the input