Sunday, July 21, 2013

Thoughts on Backing Up

I recently had a question about backing up. We can use CD's, DVD's, flash drives, external drives, and even the cloud. The CD/DVD route is slow but effective. Flash drives are useful but limited in speed and capacity. External drives and the cloud seem to me to be the best methods. Here is what I do for my own backups.

To figure out how much space you will need to copy your data to an external device, Click Start > My Computer and locate your folder (under Users in Vista and above and Documents and Settings in XP). Right click and choose Properties to see how large an external device you will need to save all the data. My "Size on disk" is over 24 gb so it would not fit on a 16 gb flash drive. If yours is less than 16 gb, then you can click properties and Send To the USB drive. If not, use an external hard drive and Send To that drive instead. 

A better approach, in my opinion is to use the Cloud daily and a backup application at least once a month.

First of all you need a cloud backup service that will backup your important files automatically. I use Mozy for that. Use the referral code GFBU22 to get the additional .25gb of storage--a total of 2.25 gb. This should allow you to backup all but your picture folder, and maybe that too depending on how big it is for free.

Here is a link to a class I gave on backups:  http://rwevans.com/cccgc/BackingUp.pdf

As I mentioned in the class notes, I use EaseUS ToDo backup (http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/download.htm) to do a complete image backup of my computers at least once a month. I do the backup to an external drive. The software is free for home use and works great. If my system fails, I can use the bootable CD created when I installed EaseUS to boot and bring my computer right back to where it was when I created the image. Then using Mozy I can sign in and restore those files I had let it backup daily and be right back to where I left off in a very short time.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Tweeting Long Messages

If you have a Twitter account you know there is a limit to the number of words you can tweet. To get around that limitation I use TwitLonger.com. I open up TwitLonger and  type or paste my message. When I click the Post button, my message is saved with link to view the entire message, no matter how long it is.


The account is free and it works great. Give it a try!

Check out my tweets and follow me at https://twitter.com/RichardEvans32