Tips to Help You Understand Computers - Technically Easy

My Introduction to Online Backups

Posted on Jun 11, 2008 in Networking, Security | 3 Comments

Recently I have begun to think more about my data, and how it should be backed up. Currently I back it up to an external 250GB Western Digital hard drive, and also to multiple Taiyo Yuden DVD+R discs. One copy of the DVDs are stored offsite for disaster recovery reasons. I wanted to include another backup means in the mix.

I went online and and began to search for various online backup solutions. There are many online companies that offer backup solutions, and each one has its good and bad points. I quickly gave two of the most popular sites a try, and this post will discuss my findings.

Backup Requirements

When I thought about backing up my data online, I had specific requirements that needed to be met. Some requirements came about after trying out certain solutions, and I eventually added them to the list. The requirements are listed below:

Must be affordable. Unfortunately, I am not made of money so I can’t spend a fortune on backing up my data. I currently have 100GB of data, and that will grow very quickly.
Must be able to back up from an external hard drive. This is very imporant as all of my data is on an external hard drive.
Must run silently in the background. If an application is to be installed, it must run quietly and efficiently in the background. It must not use a large amount of the CPU and Internet bandwidth when the machine is in use.
Must transfer the data securely. The data that is sent from my computer must be encrypted first, and then travel over the Internet securely.
Must be quick to upload and download. I have a broadband connection (10Mbps down and 640kbps up) so it must make good use of the connection to reduce the transfer time.

The above requirements can change as I think of others, but the ones listed are a good start to what I am looking for in a service.

Carbonite

Carbonite was the first service I tried, and is one of the popular online backup solutions available. They are quite affordable at $49.95 for one year, or $89.95 for two years for unlimited storage. The unlimited storage is a great option for me considering the amount of data that I need to backup.

I downloaded and installed their software without any problems. But once I installed the software, I then ran into a rather big issue for me – the software can’t backup from an external hard drive. Hoping that this wasn’t a deal breaker, I quickly did a search online to get around this problem, and did find one simple solution – mounting the external hard drive as a folder on my computer.

For those that don’t know, when you connect an external hard drive in Windows it will automatically mount to the next available drive letter. Besides a drive letter, you can also mount the drive to a folder on your computer. When you then click on the folder you will see the contents of the external hard drive.

When I did do this I was able to backup my data, although not very efficiently. I marked my data to be backed up by selecting a folder, and then left the computer running over night. When I checked the backup status the next morning I noticed that it didn’t back up anything. When I indicated that it should backup some folders right away it worked fine. Unfortunately, I have many folders so this is very inefficent.

The problem could be that the folder is pointing to an external hard drive. I uninstalled the software indicating the lack of external hard drive support as the reason. If they do start supporting external hard drives, then maybe I’ll have another look at Carbonite.

For this test, I signed up for the 30-day trial.

Mozy

Along with Carbonite, Mozy is the other popular choice for online back ups. Mozy is cheap at only $4.95 per month, $54.45 for one year, or $103.95 for two years for unlimited storage, which as mentioned earlier is great for me and my 100GB of data.

When you use Mozy you need to install a piece of software that will run in the background, similar to Carbonite. Mozy’s software, however, has many more options that you can configure. I downloaded and installed the software without any problems, and began to select my data to backup. I was quite happy to see that Mozy can read and backup my external hard drive.

I signed up for the free account which gives me 2GB of storage space for free. This allows me to test out the system indefinitely, albiet, on a very small level. I selected 1GB of my data to be backed up and began the process.

When the backup began a little window popup window showed the current status for encrypting and preparing the data, as well as the status of the transfer. The 1GB of data was backed up in about 6 hours, which means an upload speed of roughly 46KB/s. There is some transfer room here as my max upload speed is 80KB/s.

The one thing that I don’t like about Mozy is the fact that each computer you would like to use with the service requires you to pay more. I sent an e-mail to Mozy about changing computers, such as when you buy a new one and would like to use that for your backups. About 24 hours later I received a response stating that for a new computer, I should install the software on the new computer, where I will get an error when I run a backup. I should then send an e-mail back to Mozy where they can then send me a file to make things good again. No re-uploading of all my data, which is great.

Overall, I didn’t have any trouble with backing up my data with Mozy as everything went smoothly.

Summary

I have been looking into backing up my data online. With 100GB of data, I needed a service that won’t break the bank and is easy to use. I tried two of the most popular – Carbonite and Mozy, and it appears that Mozy has been able to meet my requirements.

As with all online services, there are people that have had good and bad experiences with both, as well as other backup services. I would be curious to know your opinion, or have another service that I can try. I have yet to purchase any but will be looking to do it in the near future.

Backing Up Digital Photos
Data Archiving Method
How Long Will a CD-R Last?

Interested in Guest Posting?

Posted on Jun 10, 2008 in Blogging | 3 Comments

I usually publish blog posts on Mondays (review), Wednesdays and Fridays. I came to thinking about also publishing posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays to fill out the week. The problem is finding the time to publish on all five of the days.

This is where guest posting comes in. I have decided to allows those interested to provide posts that I will publish on Tuesday or Thursday of each week. If you are interested read the details below.

Post Requirements

There are several requirements that need to be met when submitting a post:

The post must be about technology, whether it is informational or instructional.
Must be your own unique post, which means it can’t be a copy of an article written by you or someone else.
The spelling and grammar must be good, although it doesn’t have to be perfect.
No foul language will be accepted.

How to Submit

To submit an article for posting, simply send an e-mail to psalmon12@gmail.com with the following:

Your orginal written post.
Any images you want to include in the post. You can indicate where they are to be placed in the post.
A one paragraph signature, to be placed at the bottom of the post, that you would like to include. You can include one link to your Web site only in the signature.

If there are any changes that I think should be made, I will send you an e-mail with the article and changes for your approval. When the final post has been created, I will publish it on the next available date (Tuesday or Thursday). I will then send you an e-mail indicating the date the post will be published.

Review: My Ideas 4 You

Posted on Jun 9, 2008 in Web Site - Review | 1 Comment

I have reviewed several personal blogs in the past, and compared to more niche oriented blogs I find them the most difficult to review. Personal blogs aren’t written with one specific topic in mind, but rather, can span a whole range of topics.

The one aspect of personal blogs that is different compared to some niche blogs is the frequency in which they are updated. Many are updated on a daily basis. This week I review a personal blog that is updated several times a day.

Web Site: My Ideas 4 You

Description: It’s a blog about my personal life as well as gadgets and tools which I have seen or used before. I will also publish my own point of views and reviews of movies, computing software and hardware.

Design

The design of the blog and the colours chosen by the author is pretty unique to this blog. The author has chosen to go with a black background with orange and yellow highlighting. Since the background is so dark, and the orange and yellow is so bright, it provides a nice contrast between the colours.

The actual text used is a gray colour, which may be difficult to read as it isn’t nearly as bright as white would be in that situation.

The layout itself is really simple, with the content on the left and a navigation sidebar on the right. At the top is a bar that includes a menu and several options, such as font size and administration options. The adjustable font size is a nice feature to have. This allows a visitor to increase or decrease the size of the font to their liking.

Below the top menubar is a few links, a calendar, the subscription information, and a hitcounter. The calendar highlights the days containing posts, which you can click on to display the posts.

The navigation sidebar is nicely organized with the main navigational links at the top to make them easy to find. One nice touch to the categories is the grouping of certain topics, such as a Technology topic with several related topics below that.

The blog layout overall is really well done, not too crowded and easy to navigate.

Focus

From what I can get out of My Ideas 4 You, it appears to be a personal blog about whatever the author feels about talking about. This can lead to a lack of focus as is evident when you read the blog. The author has chosen to discuss many topics so there is no real focus to the blog.

A solution to this problem is to simply create multiple blogs, one for each topic, which would help keep the blog in focus.

Content

The content is updated several times on a daily basis. This is great for those that like to read personal blogs regularily as there will always be a post on this blog.

The posts themselves are not long and can contain only one or two paragraphs. If the posts were longer, the author may not write as many. Of course the other downside to so many posts is the lack of images. Only a few posts each week contain an image, which reduces the amount of colour on the blog.

If you enjoy reading blogs with short content, few images, and updated on a regular basis, then you may want to check out My Ideas 4 you.

Spelling and Grammar

The spelling and grammar is the weakest part of the blog. Although, My Ideas 4 You isn’t dominated by bad spelling and grammar, it can make it difficult to read a few posts. I had to reread a few sentences because of either a word missing, or a long run-on sentence. Using a spellchecker and reading the posts before they are published would definitely help this blog.

As I read the free review e-mail that the author sent me, I noticed that he did make mention about his grammar, and is aware of it.

Overall

My Ideas 4 You has some nice features that aren’t common in other blogs, such as the font size modifiers and the calendar control at the top. The blog’s layout is by far its strongest part, with the spelling and grammar being the weakest.

The blog is updated several times on a daily basis, which is great for those that like to read the blog. A few more images in the posts would add some much needed colour to the blog, especially considering it uses a black background.

Making a few changes, such as the images and correcting the spelling and grammar would greatly improve My Ideas 4 You.

How To Open Microsoft Office 2007 Documents in Earlier Versions

Posted on Jun 6, 2008 in Windows | 3 Comments

I recently ran into an issue with an e-mail attachment. The extension of the attachment was .xlsx, which made me believe that it was a Microsoft Excel document. I saved the document to the local hard drive and attempted to open it, but was dismayed to find that no application was associated with it.

After looking online to find the application associated with the extension I found out that it was indeed an Excel file for Microsoft Office 2007. I had Office 2000 installed, which explains why I couldn’t open it. After some more research I found out that there is a tool you can download and install that will allow older versions of the Office tools to open files from newer versions.
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Fix: ASP.Net Client-side Validation

Posted on Jun 4, 2008 in Web Site | 3 Comments

Besides managing Technically Easy, I also manage other web sites. These web sites were developed using Microsoft’s .Net framework and were coded in C#. Recently a problem had developed that caused me some grief.

In the test environment, the ASP.Net client-side validation controls (used on some web forms) worked perfectly. They highlighted the fields that weren’t filled in correctly when a visitor clicked the submit button. In production, however, they stopped working. After some serious research I determined the cause of the problem and was able to fix it. This post will explain how I did it.

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