That’s Not a Hard Drive, It’s a Weapon: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-20-08

The pre-release MiniStation DataVault seemed so light, so airy, so harmless, as Jay Pechek passed it to me in the Market Bar in San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

“The Defense Department actually classified this as munitions because of the level of encryption,” he explained. Unlike many devices, where you can bypass a Windows password by accessing it through DOS, there is no backdoor on this drive. Either you know the password, or all but the first 150 MB of the drive is invisible to you. (So make sure enter that password into your password-storing program, because you will be in big trouble if you lose it.) When you copy data onto the drive, it gets encrypted on the fly.

Mind you, it was somewhat less than intuitively obvious how one went about changing the password. It turns out that if you click the “options” button, you’re prompted for the old password and then a new one, and can provide yourself a hint. But once you’ve logged in with the initial (woefully obvious) password, you can only get to the login screen by disconnecting and reconnecting the drive. Other attempts to get at the password program result in the following error message:

 

(Um, yes. Buffalo is a Japanese company. And yes, they’re the ones who had the WIDnows error message in the DriveStation Duo user interface. And yes, I’m an incurable pedant. Plus, of course, it just enhances my credibility immensely that I’m willing to point out mistakes made by people who bribe me. Right?)

The point of the encryption is not really military, despite the export restrictions. It probably wouldn’t take a whole lot of interrogation to make most of us reveal our passwords. What the super-security of the DataVault protects against is loss and theft. The thing about portable hard drives is that people carry them around. That means an increased likelihood of leaving them someplace. And if the drive you forget on the subway has confidential corporate information on it—or worse yet, confidential customer information—you’re probably out of a job, and your ex-employer’s PR staff is going to have a lot more to worry about than bloggers picking on their grammar and spelling.

So now that I have a new, stronger password on the drive, I can travel with it and use it to back up things like Quicken data and Outlook and client projects, and not worry that someone could pocket the drive and get me in trouble. (They’d have an easier time breaking into my laptop, but a much harder time fitting this 17-inch monster inconspicuously into a pocket.)

Another thing that makes the DataVault a good drive to travel with is its shockproof design. Rather than make the drive paper-thin, Buffalo put shock absorbers and plenty of air space around the drive. (I imagine that helps with cooling, too, though the drive does get warm to the touch.) It’s still less than an inch thick and seems fairly dainty to me, but can reportedly survive a fall of 50 inches. One presumes that’s while it’s not spinning; it seems unlikely anyone would be attaching it with a 50-inch USB cable in any case.

I have not tested this claim myself. Perhaps I should, for the sake of thoroughness, but I’m hesitant to mistreat equipment—or damage the wood floor, for that matter.

The DataVault mounts like a U3 stick: Windows interprets it as two separate drives, one of them a “CD drive.” I hadn’t thought about that when choosing a name for the drive, but it worked out anyway. Since the “CD” partition calls itself “Utility,” designating that as drive “U” and the data partition “V” was a fairly obvious move. I already have a “D” drive and an “M” drive, so it’s “V” for “vault” and into the Who’s Who in Classical Mythology for some inspiration on naming.

I ended up calling the drive Vesta, for the Roman goddess of the hearth. The Vestal Virgins not only had a small, charming temple in the middle of Rome, but they guarded wills and other important documents. Plus there are all those literary associations between virginity and unbreached walls.

As far as utilities go, I had expected something more like U3 or Ceedo, but this particular DataVault drive, at least, came with the SecureDisk Tool, TurboUSB for maximizing connection speed, a couple of PDF manuals and an Adobe Reader installation package, and Memeo AutoBackup.

Of course, the DataVault is designed to be plug-and-play with both Windows machines and Macs, and U3 only works on Windows. This could have something to do with the fairly primitive 1990s-style menu of options.

Since I had already installed Memeo along with the LinkStation Mini last week (and more on that in another post), I just created a new backup job. This time I decided to check out the “smart picks” backup option, which finds and backs up files by type. Even though I checked all the obvious types of files on my C drive, the total only came to about 6 GB, and Memeo found and copied them in sprightly fashion. (Maybe that TurboUSB stuff really works.)

I’d say that there’s a good likelihood I’ll bring Vesta with me on my next trip, instead of either of my other two portable drives. (Hmm. Maybe I should call that FreeAgent Go drive “Freya.” Somehow it escaped getting a proper name.) For one thing, Vesta only needs one USB port, and the others need one each for power and data transfer.

That’s all the time I have for playing with toys this morning, but I’ll be reporting back in with more details about Memeo and the LinkStation Mini.

Technorati Tags: Buffalo Technology,DataVault,LinkStation Mini,Memeo AutoBackup,Ceedo,U3,TurboUSB,FreeAgent Go

Why Ted Loves Western Digital: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 02-01-08

This week we have a guest column from my colleague Ted Prodromou of Net Biz Experts. Ted and I are both members of the Executive Team for the Bay Area Consultants Network. For those who are interested, he's leading a series of free webinars about Web 2.0, and on February 8th, I'll be presenting about podcasting.

I thought my non-geek readers would appreciate a story that demonstrates that even IT experts suffer from computer disasters.

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I'm sure you've heard it a million times, BACKUP YOUR DATA! I've heard it a million times and I've been telling my clients to back up their data for almost 30 years (am I really that old?) My friend Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with "sketch") is a backup evangelist. She is the queen of backups and constantly reminds everyone she meets to back up your data at least once a week.

Of course I backup my data occasionally. I have backup programs installed on my computer but I don't run them regularly because they take too long to run. I have tons of data on 3 computers and most of it isn't backed up regularly even though I know better.

I was running out of disk space on 2 of my computers so I ventured down to Best Buy to check out the fancy new external USB hard drives. For almost nothing I could add more disk space than I can even fill up. I ended up purchasing 2 new hard drives, one portable 320 GB drive for my laptop and a 1 TB (yes that's terabyte) drive so I could back up all 3 computers to one drive.

I ended up purchasing the Western Digital Passport portable drive that constantly syncs my data as it's created. I also purchased the Western Digital MyBook terabyte hard drive so I could back up data from all 3 computers to a central location.

I ran home and plugged in my new Western Digital Passport and instantly it appeared on My Computer. No installation hassles. Nothing to configure. Presto I had more disk space instantly. I installed the Memeo backup software that comes installed on the drive and I was syncing my data with the Western Digital Passport in less than 5 minutes.

Next I installed the Western Digital MyBook on my other computer and instantly I had an entire terabyte of disk space to play with. I configured a backup with the Memeo software and I was backing up 3 computers to my Western Digital MyBook in no time. In less than one hour I had all 3 computers backing up to my Western Digital MyBook and my primary computer syncing data to my Western Digital Passport. Unbelievable!

And as fate would have it, today I turned on my computer and Outlook wouldn't open. The PST database file was corrupt and the repair program could only salvage part of my data. I would have lost most of my email archive, my contact database and my calendar. Well I simply found the backup file on my Western Digital MyBook and I was back in business!

Thank you Sallie and thank you Western Digital. You are lifesavers!!

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Reposted from Ted's Blog.

Technorati Tags: Western Digital,MyBook,Memeo AutoBackup,NetBizExperts,Ted Prodromou

Note to Buffalo: Hire a Proofreader

A client of the Ur-Guru's just bought a Buffalo DriveStation Duo USB drive. Kudos to him for taking care of backups, but when he installed the software, he found something a bit less than reassuring in the dialog boxes:

In case you didn't catch it (I didn't, the first time), the RAID setup utility is asking the user to restart WiDNows instead of WiNDows. This is doubtless a typo, and while it probably doesn't indicate anything about the RAID software, it's not encouraging.

Badly written user interfaces and documentation suggest that the manufacturer is cutting corners and the product may not be reliable. If you're using free software downloaded from a small start-up site, that may not be such a big deal, but Buffalo Technology is a major corporation and the DriveStation Duo is not a cheap piece of equipment.

Hiring one editor/proofreader to polish the documentation is probably more cost-efficient than employing only programmers with fluent English, but however you choose to do it, make sure your software is literate.

Technorati Tags: DriveStation Duo,Buffalo Technology

How do YOU Back up Your Computer? FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-28-07

Here it is the end of another year of backups—almost time to make those special year-end copies of your important data to store with your tax records. I thought I’d do something a bit different for today’s column, so I put a question out to my LinkedIn network asking the people I know what they do for backups. (And no, this is not what “networked backups” means.)

Most of the answers came as private messages, so I won’t quote them in their entirety here, but I’ll list the different tools people are using and write a bit about each, so you can decide which ones might be good for you.

• Amazon S3. The person who mentioned this isn’t using it yet; he’s got a couple of 250 GB external drives. S3 stands for “Simple Storage Service.” It’s fairly inexpensive: $0.15 per GB per month for storage, plus similar rates for data transfer in and out. Jeremy Zawdny has made a list of S3-compatible backup software, since otherwise S3 isn’t really a backup solution, just a storage solution.

• Buffalo TeraStation. This is network storage for people who have serious data to back up. It supports full RAID 5 configuration, which offers protection from disk failure (unless something kills off all the disks at once), and comes in capacities up to 4 TB. It’s big, solid, and expensive: about $700 for the 1 TB version. The TeraStation comes with automated backup software called Memeo AutoBackup, about which I know nothing, but will try to find out more. If you’re a photographer, musician, or videographer, or just run an office that generates masses of data, this could be the product for you.
  
  
• Carbonite got two recommendations—or was it three? It’s been around longer than Mozy, and costs $50/year for unlimited online backup. They’re working on a Mac version, but it’s not available yet. Instead of backing up on a schedule, it backs up files as they change. That’s known as “continuous data protection” and has advantages and disadvantages. One potential disadvantage is slowing down your computer; another is backing up changes that you didn’t want to make. The advantage is that you’ll never lose a whole day’s data. Also, unless you’re working on several large files simultaneously, you won’t have to wait through endless uploads after the first backup is finished.
  
  
• Cobian Backup. This was a new one on me, but it turns out it’s been around for a long time. Cobian is free open-source backup software for Windows. It allows scheduling, encryption, and backup online via FTP. The user interface looks fairly similar to that for SyncBack SE and for Backup4All. I guess there are only so many ways to configure setting up a backup program. There’s a tutorial for version 7 online. (You need Internet Explorer to view it, though.)
  
  
• EMC Retrospect for tape backup. Retrospect comes in a lot of flavors and is compatible with both Vista and Leopard—or so their website claims. The Express version that used to come bundled with external drives is easy enough to use, but stores your data in a proprietary format and doesn’t let you browse through the backed up files. (Norton Ghost stores files in a proprietary format, but at least there’s the Ghost Explorer to let you retrieve individual files.) The Professional version supports tape drives, which most consumer backup products don’t. I’m not a huge fan of tape, but it does provide a way to get your data off-site, and it’s still common in enterprises.
  
  
• Genie Backup Manager comes with two recommendations, one from the owner of the TeraStation and one from a respected IT colleague. It comes in Home and Pro versions. Both of them seem to be pretty comprehensive tools for backing up everything on your computer to just about any medium you could imagine. The site also features a backup encyclopedia. The Home version is $50; the Pro version is $70, and the server version is $400—which is probably a good deal if you have 50 computers to back up. Windows only.
  
  
• Karen’s Replicator. Yes, there is someone besides me in the world who’s a big fan of this free program for Windows file backup and synchronization. I suppose I might be slightly biased in its favor because it was created by a woman, but it’s been doing a great job of backing up my files for years now, and it’s easy to use. Very handy for copying files onto one of those USB external drives mentioned above. It’s less sophisticated than Cobian, so which you use depends on your needs.
  
  
• Mozy. I’ve written about this online backup service before, and it seems it, too, has other fans out there. The free version gives you 2 GB of storage and is available for Vista, XP, Windows 2000, and Mac OS X. The Pro version is available for all flavors of Windows (including servers), but not for Mac. Pro licenses are $3.95/month plus a $0.50/GB/month charge.
  
  
• USB External Drive. Given all I’ve written about such drives already, I don’t think that needs a lot of explaining. But if you have an older machine with USB 1.1, consider getting an XHD with a FireWire connection instead. (Assuming you have a FireWire port, that is. You can use an external drive for manual drag-and-drop backups or with automated backup software.
  
  
• Windows Home Server. This is network storage and then some. I have read good things about WHS, and the person who uses it says it rocks. In addition to doing automatic backups of multiple computers, it acts as a media server. (Sort of like my Maxtor Shared Storage II, but more so; the interface on the MSS-II is designed for simplicity rather than flexibility.) You can install it on a not-too-old computer yourself, if you’re on the geeky side, or you can buy it pre-installed on something like the HP MediaSmart Server. The software costs about $189; the full rig about $600. There’s a good description with screenshots over at Tiger Direct. Best for those with multiple computers and lots of audio and video files.

If you use a backup service or program not listed here, feel free to post it in the comments to the blog or e-mail it to me. I’ll be happy to produce a second list. Indeed, I might try to twist the arms of my Mac-using friends to get a list of different Mac-compatible backup products that people actually use.

Meanwhile, try not to spill champagne on your hard drive when celebrating the New Year, and I’ll see you again in 2008.

Technorati Tags: Cobian,Genie Backup Manager,Windows Home Server,EMC Retrospect,TeraStation,Carbonite,Mozy,Karen's Replicator,Amazon S3,Memeo AutoBackup

We Wish You a Merry Backup: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-21-07

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I'd like to wish you a very merry backup. As I did last year at about this time, I want to urge you to give your friends, family, co-workers, employees, clients (check all that apply), and most of all yourself the gift of backups.

Free Online Backup

If you're strapped for cash, try sitting down with your loved ones and setting up accounts for them on Mozy. Of course, the ones who just got new digital video cameras for Christmas are going to need more than the 2GB of storage that comes with a free account, but for many people, it's plenty. And it has the advantage that once you've set it up, it runs automatically and you don't have to think about it again unless you use up your storage quota or need to retrieve a file. (There are other online backup services, and I'll mention some of them next week, but Mozy is the one I have the most experience with.)

Bear in mind that the first backup with any online service will take several hours, and it's definitely not suitable for people with dial-up connections.

Free Backup Software

I remain a fan of Karen's Replicator for file backups, and also use SyncBack Free, which can be set to copy data from one drive to another whenever the computer is idle. I just recommended DriveImage XML to a client to replace his outmoded version of the now-extinct Drive Image 7. If you've got a little bit of technical know-how, you can download one of these and set it up for someone as a present.

USB Flash Drives

USB sticks (also known as key drives or thumb drives) are ubiquitous and cheap. They don't make good long-term storage, but they're still better than having no second copy of your data at all, and you can easily store them in a safe deposit box away from your office. You can also get them branded with your company logo. Your employees and customers are sure to find them more useful than pens or key chains.

External Hard Drives

Capacities are going up and prices are coming down. Large-capacity external drives make good gifts for people who take thousands of digital photos, have massive music collections, and make videos of every event in their children's lives. (For these people you might even want something that acts as a media server.) All those things can take up a lot of space.

If the intended recipient travels a lot, one of the smaller external drives like the Western Digital Passport, Maxtor OneTouch Mini, or Seagate FreeAgent Go is probably a better choice. The Ur-guru has a good half-dozen of the Passports, all in shiny (fingerprint-attracting) black. I've got one each of the Seagate and Maxtor drives. All of them come with backup software pre-installed.

Rebit

If you have technophobes with new laptops on your list, it could be worth investing in a Rebit. They're pricier than ordinary external hard drives, but they're very simple and they run continuously in the background without noticeably hindering performance. And they're cute. Like the online services, though, Rebit takes a long time to create the initial backup.

Network Drives

If you have multiple computers in one home or office, a network drive may be the way to go. I've written extensively about my Maxtor Shared Storage II (also pictured above--it's the one that looks like a cinder block). Other options include the Buffalo Linkstation and Western Digital's My Book World Edition. The My Book has a little problem with multimedia files, though: it doesn't want you to upload them to the Internet, even if you made them yourself and own the copyright.

Network drives tend to be on the expensive side, not to mention being a bit large to fit in stockings, but they can be very useful.

Merry Backup to all, and to all a good night.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor,Rebit,Western Digital,Seagate,Buffalo Linkstation,Karen's Replicator,SyncBack,DriveImage XML

Revelations from a Reinstall: FileSlinger(TM) Backup Reminder 11-23-07

No, I was not sleeping off Thanksgiving overindulgence instead of writing this backup reminder on Friday morning. I was just absorbed in completing my delayed-and-necessary reinstall before heading to work. I thought a late reminder would be better than none, and now that I'm finished with all but those last little tweaks that drag on for a week or two, I can pass on the backup-related lessons I've learned as a result of this adventure.

1. Set Aside at Least 3 Days

I realize that for many of my readers, reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling your operating system falls into the “Kids, don't try this at home” category. But even those who leave these things to someone else should be aware of just how time-consuming and tedious a job it is.

It took me most of one day to make a list of the software I'd need to put back on the machine when I was finished, make sure I had the most recent versions of Audacity, Firefox, Skype, Karen's Replicator, and all the other freeware programs I use regularly, download all the most recent drivers from HP (the manufacturer of my computer), Epson (the manufacturer of my printer and scanner), and Wacom (the manufacturer of my pen tablet)—and, of course, to back up all my data in as many ways as I could think of. If you're a computer owner preparing to have someone else reinstall your machine, you may be able to do this part yourself and save some money.

The second day was devoted to reformatting the C drive and reinstalling Windows XP Pro. A full format on an 80-GB drive takes about 40 minutes, with about 40 minutes more to install Windows. Except I ended up doing it twice, because the first time around I forgot to delete the restore partition that CompUSA had put onto the drive and which I'd failed to notice and eliminate during my last install. (I'm one of those people who thinks putting your system restore onto the same drive as your system makes no sense. Think about it a bit.)

But even if I hadn't had to do the formatting twice, there are all those Windows updates to download, many of them requiring restarts. And then there are the drivers. Without the correct display driver, for instance, everything on my widescreen laptop looks weirdly stretched out.

Once all the updates were finished and the drivers installed, I had to make a Ghost image so I wouldn't need to do that part over if something went wrong later on.

I also got quite a bit of the software installed on the second day, but not all of it. That put the main focus of the third day onto restoring my data--once I'd made a Ghost image of the installed programs.

Copying documents back onto the C drive was straightforward enough, though it takes a bit of time. Other things have to go back into specific places: the settings for Replicator, for instance, or my Outlook data file. (And I discovered that if I also copy my Outlook Extend.dat file along with the .pst file, Outlook magically remembers all my rules and other settings.) I'm still finding little details of program options that I need to set—that's part of the ongoing tweaking.

The other part of the third day I spent re-configuring backups, in the course of which I made some other discoveries.

2. Don't Get a Rebit if You Have Multiple Internal Drives

I understand from the Rebit people that they're working on this issue, but while I'd known Rebit would only back up my C drive, I hadn't realized that the presence of two internal drives would cause their bare-metal recovery option to fail.

Since I was about to reinstall the machine anyway, I figured I had nothing at all to lose by testing Rebit's PC Recovery CD. So I inserted the CD and rebooted my machine, which brought me into a friendly-looking non-Windows interface designed to lead me through what they call a bare-metal restore. (That means it restores your operating system and software as well as your data.)

Unfortunately, it didn't lead me very far, because it couldn't tell which of my internal drives was which. They are the same make and size, so I probably couldn't tell which was which if you put them in front of me, but there are ways for other programs to tell them apart, because one is set as the “master” drive and one as the “slave” drive. (The operating system goes on the “master” drive, which is Drive0, and if you try to put it anywhere else, you'll have no end of trouble.)

I imagine that Rebit's engineers will be able to fix this problem fairly easily. Not that many laptops have two internal drives, so it's possible none of their users have run into the problem before. But meanwhile, I can't use their restore CD.

3. Some (Backup) Programs Won't Recognize Your Computer after a Reinstall

I had suspected that Rebit might not recognize my newly-reinstalled computer as the same one it had been protecting before, since the log information it had installed before was now gone, along with any recognition signals that go into the registry. (The registry is where Windows keeps all the really important information about how to operate. Don't mess with it. Especially don't mess with it without backing up your whole system first.) And, indeed, when I connected the Rebit, it offered to start protecting my computer. (I said no, not having enough time right then for it to go through that lengthy initial backup sequence.)

What I hadn't expected was problems with Mozy, the free online backup service I use. While I could log into Mozy and see or restore my previous backups, creating a new backup set was a problem. I didn't really want to create a new backup set at all, but to use the old one, but Mozy isn't set up to recognize that even I wouldn't have two computers named “Enheduanna.” Instead of adding new files to the existing backup, it wanted to create an entirely new backup from scratch. (I only discovered this because I kept getting "over quota" warnings that didn't make sense when I did the math on the files in the folders I wanted backed up.) I ended up deleting the old Mozy backup file and starting over—which means that my slow initial Mozy backup is still running. (Though I trust the current prediction of 1 week and 4 days to back up 2 GB is only a product of wildly fluctuating upload speeds, and not an accurate estimate.)

4. Some Drive Problems are Beyond Baffling

More or less immediately after reinstalling Windows, I ran Chkdsk to see whether the reformat had cured my drive problems. The answer: apparently not, as Chkdsk thinks I have 4 KB in bad sectors. This despite the fact that I haven't seen any other sign of drive errors--or not in the C drive, anyway. (I've had some error messages relating to controllers and other problems with my external drives, which may be a matter of their built-in software not being entirely compatible; I'm not sure and need to investigate further.)

A geek friend let me use his copy of SpinRite, a handy tool meant to find and fix problems like bad sectors. It has a good reputation, and my erstwhile colleagues at Kickstartnews.com like it. Since I wasn't feeling well enough to actually do anything with my computer yesterday afternoon, I put the CD in as soon as I'd finished the data transfer and made my final (for this reinstall) Ghost image.

Nine hours and six minutes later, SpinRite woke me out of a sound sleep to tell me it had finished. I looked over its graphical display of all the sectors on my C drive (SpinRite had no trouble at all telling which drive was which, but prompted me to choose the correct drive to test). Every single one was the nice blue color that indicated it had passed the test and was fine. Not one was marked "recovered," much less "defective" or "unrecovered." In other words, my drive is fine. (And it didn't even get all that hot while spinning continuously for 9 hours.)

So what did I find when I started Windows again (at a more civilized hour of the morning) and ran Chkdsk again? I still have 4 K in bad sectors. Except they seem to be illusionary bad sectors. The Ur-Guru is just as baffled as I am, but says that any serious problems with either the drive or the electronics that control it should have shown up in the course of that 9 hours. So maybe I can ignore Chkdsk's 4K.

On the other hand, maybe there really is a strange and subtle problem with my drive. So I have to be even more diligent about creating Ghost images and file backups than usual.

Technorati Tags: SpinRite,Rebit,Mozy,chkdsk

Seagate “Spy Scare” a Tempest in a Taipei Teapot: All They Want is Your Warcraft Password

The Ur-Guru sent me a link this morning to an article in The Inquirer entitled "Seagate Hard Drives Turn into Spy Machines." Now, you have to expect overblown headlines from a paper whose purpose is to spread controversy, so I passed the link on to Jason Pecheck at Seagate and asked him what was up.

Jay phoned back within about 10 seconds of my pressing the "send" button, which suggested that Seagate is taking its bad press pretty seriously. Yes, some of the drives made by one of Seagate's Taiwanese subcontractors were infected with a virus brought in by an employee. And no, you probably don't own one, because almost all of them were sold in Southeast Asia. There's already an update to your anti-virus software that should deal with it; if for some reason you haven't updated your virus definitions lately, you can do so, or install a special version of Kaspersky from the Seagate website.

But dude, let's get real here about the level of the threat involved and the possibility of spying. The virus wanted one thing and one thing only from those it infected: passwords to online games. So unless you not only have a Maxtor Basics 3200 but also play World of Warcraft, WSGame, 91.com, QQ, Woool, rxjh.17game.com, TianLongBaBu, AskTao, or Perfect World (Wanmei Shijie), you were never in any danger.

Of course, if you are a gamer and bought one of these drives in Southeast Asia, better update your virus definitions quick. But I don't think the Chinese are going to get any government secrets out of Taiwan with this one.

Technorati Tags: Seagate, World of Warcraft, viruses

Rebit: Ridiculously Simple, but Ridiculously Slow: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 11-09-07

A few days ago I received a review copy of the new Rebit backup device. Rebit (not to be confused with reByte, which I wrote about back in 2004)claims to be "ridiculously simple backup" for Windows computers. (The XP version is available now, with Vista coming soon.) It comes in a cute green box with a frog logo and the tagline "Retrieve. Restore. Relax." In the box are the device (basically a 2.5" hard drive), a cable, a carrying case, a recovery CD, and a very thin booklet with instructions and information.

The Rebit website describes backup with Rebit as "Easy as 1," which echoes the recent claim about Time Machine not needing a Step 3. In this case, it's a slight exaggeration, because you do have to do more than plug it in--though not much.

I decided that the best way to discover whether Rebit was in fact "ridiculously simple" was to have my less-technically-ept housemate test it on her computer. She's more than capable of plugging in a USB cable, so that part went fine. But her PC guy must have disabled autorun for USB devices, because she didn't get the expected dialog box inviting her to start protecting her computer with Rebit.

We found the drive easily enough in Windows Explorer and clicked on "setup.exe." At that point, we got the license agreement. ("It's all right, click yes," I said.) Then we got a warning message from Windows that drive F was no longer available, which was a bit confusing, even alarming. But the little frog icon appeared in the system tray with a notification bubble explaining that Rebit was preparing to back up the drive.

"Okay," I said. "You can ignore it now."

"Can I still use my computer?"

"Sure."

This was at roughly noon on Thursday. By the time I went to bed, Rebit had only reached "1% completed." By the time I got up this morning, the initial backup was 6% complete.

Now, admittedly, my housemate's computer only has USB 1.1, so making a drive image (which is essentially what Rebit is doing) takes a good while. But her 80 GB drive only has 25 GB filled, and making a Ghost image of that drive definitely does not require 14 hours. Indeed, it's now just about 24 hours since we connected the Rebit, and it's only at 9%. That's not just slow, it's ridiculously slow.

I've got a call in to Rebit to find out what might be causing this problem. I'm quite sure this isn't the way the system is meant to work, that the process has been faster than this in their internal tests. They, and we, need to know about anything that might interfere with the effectiveness of the Rebit, in order to find ways to work around the problems and keep things simple for the user.

So I'll keep you posted. With any luck, by this time next week, not only will the backup be complete, but we'll be able to test out the file restoring function, as well.

Technorati Tags: Rebit

Test-Driving the (Maxtor OneTouch) Mini: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-19-07

Yes, I'm two days late with this. Friday morning we were in Dunsmuir. It was raining so hard you couldn't even see Mount Shasta, the Ur-Guru was in an evil mood because of the weather, and we were facing a long drive across the mountains to Eureka to meet my long-lost cousin and his family. So I had just about time to back up the computer to my new Maxtor OneTouch Mini drive, and no time to write about it.

Enough with the excuses, already. I'm home, the sun is shining, and I'm in no hurry to see the inside of my car again for a while.

This was actually the second trip with the Mini drive rather than the Seagate FreeAgent Go drive I bought a few months ago, since I wanted to be able to test it a bit more and contrast the two. Though about the same physical size, and with the same capacity, they look nothing alike. The Mini has a brushed-metal top with a rectangular depression above the Maxtor name, nested in slightly rubberized black plastic with rounded edges and a small but bright white LED which changes in brightness and pattern depending on whether the drive is sleeping, working, or powered down.

Overall, I think the design of the FreeAgent Go drive is more attractive (in spite of that huge yellow light). The OneTouch series, large and small, are supposed to look solid and vault-like, conveying security, whereas the emphasis with the FreeAgent drives is portability. (I'm paraphrasing Jay Pecheck's answer to my question about whether there were any plans to converge the two series of drives.) The hefty OneTouch 4 Plus with its odd trapezoidal profile succeeds at that; trying to make anything as small as the Mini look vault-like risks an excess of cute. But it does make for a matched set when one has both models.

Like the FreeAgent Go, the OneTouch Mini requires two USB ports, one for power and one for data. This is probably the thing I like least about the drives, because if I have both of them connected, it means that my USB hub and the four ports on my laptop are all filled. (If you're curious, the other ports are taken up by the tablet and the scanner, now that the printer is connected to the Shared Storage II.) One thing I can say in favor of those shiny, fingerprint-attracting Western Digital drives the Ur-Guru has is that they only need one USB port apiece. So, since I know it's technically possible to run power and data through the same USB cable, I'm not sure why the Seagate/Maxtor drives don't do that.

The cables are a minor quibble, though. I've had no complaints with the FreeAgent drive since I got it, and the Mini is shaping up nicely. Jay isn't kidding about wanting to associate the Maxtor name with data protection, since the Mini comes with three different options for backup.

Two of the backup options included with the OneTouch Mini (and the OneTouch Plus) are familiar, at least to someone who has used other Seagate/Maxtor products. There's a basic backup program like the one on the Shared Storage II, where you choose the folders to back up and the days you want the backup job to run.

I ran into a small problem when choosing folders: many of the folders on my C drive didn't appear in the list, presumably because Maxtor Manager identified them as hidden or system files, which it doesn't support. In three cases, at least, those identifications are wrong, since I have three folders under C which hold my business documents: ! Author-izer, ! FileSlinger, and ! Podcast Asylum. The exclamation points (which are there to ensure the folders appear at the top of the list in an alphabetical sorting) seem to confuse Maxtor Manager.

I got around this problem by selecting the same folders on my D drive, which contain almost-as-recent information as those on my C drive, thanks to SyncBack—as well as many older files which are no longer active but which I might need if a former client calls. (Apparently Maxtor Manager only worries about exclamation points on your C drive.)

Unlike many software programs, Maxtor Manager's backup doesn't offer you the option of backing up your e-mail or your bookmarks. Since I use Outlook and my .pst file (with all my mail and contact information) is kept in a "hidden" folder (I long since un-hid it), I can't even manually choose to back that data up, but I had no trouble with backing up the archive .pst files on the D drive. Because Outlook locks those files when it's running, though, running the Maxtor Backup program with Outlook open results in a "backup failed" message and a little red icon in the system tray. (The same is true for Quicken data, but the program doesn't appear to have any problems with open Microsoft Office documents.)

The Mini's second backup option, Sync, suffers from the same "blindness" as the backup program, and works much the same way. You get a choice of "Simple Sync," which synchronizes the My Documents folder and "Custom Sync," where you choose your own folders; in my case the choices are "My Documents," "Desktop," "C," and "D." (Some people tend to store a lot of stuff on their desktops, something I never understood but see often enough to understand why Seagate chose to provide that option.)

The difference between "Sync" and "Backup" is that Sync copies—and deletes—files in both directions. The idea is to be able to update your files on one computer, sync with the Mini drive, connect the drive to another computer, and sync again to ensure all the newest files get transferred onto that machine, updating any previous versions. You can choose to sync automatically or manually, and to have the program ask whether you want to replace files or always overwrite. Except for the restriction on the folders you can choose to synchronize, Maxtor Sync appears identical to Seagate's Folder Sync, though I think the Seagate interface is a bit slicker (unfortunate color scheme notwithstanding).

These tools, while useful enough, are nothing really new. The most interesting backup option on the OneTouch drives is SafetyDrill, Maxtor's new drive imaging software. The Ur-Guru and I tested it on a system we'd just reinstalled, and it worked perfectly. To make the image, you go to the "Safety" tab in Maxtor Manager (denoted by a life ring) and choose "Create SafetyDrill(TM) Copy Now." You can ask for reminders to create copies every X days, and you can limit the space your OneTouch drive lets you use for those copies. You can also decide how many of those copies you want to keep (just the most recent, the last two, the latest five, etc).

To restore from your image, you need to boot your machine from the SafetyDrill™ CD which ships with the drive. Once you do that, you find yourself in a Linux environment. Don't mind the X-shaped pointer; everything in SafetyDrill works pretty much the same as in Windows, and there's not much room for confusion, since the only choice you have to make is which image to restore. The idea is to keep you from making mistakes during such a critical operation.

Backup and restore times were comparable to Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate (which we'd just used to make an image before testing SafetyDrill). SafetyDrill is easier to use, at least for those who aren't familiar with DOS and the rather odd way Ghost rearranges your drive letters. I'm thinking of using the Mini to store drive images and keeping the space on the FreeAgent available for straight file copies. It's small enough that it's easy to take out of my office and store in a safe-deposit box (should I ever get one), and the drive has encryption options built in, both password-protection for the entire drive and Maxtor Encryption, which automatically encrypts and decrypts files when you put them in the password-protected folder it creates.

It's always good to put a password on anything it's easy to lose, like small hard drives, USB sticks, PDAs—and laptops, which may not be all that easy to lose, but remain easy to steal. Just back up the password somewhere other than the Mini drive.

I'd give the Mini four stars out of five. I think it needs an e-mail backup option if it's really going to protect people's most critical data without resorting to a complete drive image. And since many laptops are short on USB ports, combining the data and power cables into one would enhance usability and portability. Nevertheless, I think the software bundled with the Mini, in particular SafetyDrill, is a big improvement on the "lite" version of Retrospect that shipped with earlier OneTouch drives.

Finally, I have to wonder why Maxtor is sticking with the OneTouch name, because neither the Mini nor the Plus has a button on it that you can press to run your backups. Admittedly you can back up or sync by right-clicking on the Maxtor icon, but that's actually two touches. Given that the backups run automatically once you set them up, perhaps "Touch Free" would be more accurate.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor, OneTouch Mini, SafetyDrill

Drowning in Drives: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-12-07

I want to start this week's Backup Reminder with a story about how spam blockers can sometimes backfire. It turns out that Jay Pecheck at Seagate actually responded to the first message I sent him about the unexpected and untimely demise of Teras, the Maxtor Shared Storage II drive he had sent me last August.

The problem was, I had recently turned on a challenge/response system for my sallie [at] fileslinger [dot] com e-mail account. (That funny way of writing my e-mail address is to foil the harvester bots.) Unless you're already on my "whitelist" of e-mail addresses to accept, the first time you send a message to that address, you get a "challenge" message generated by my mail server, which asks you to reply in order to confirm that you're a real person and not a spam-bot. (You've probably seen the more sophisticated versions of this system used by Earthlink and Spam Arrest.) All you need to do is hit "reply," and then "send," and your original message will reach me.

Unless my "challenge" message gets caught in your spam filter, that is. Then you never realize that there's something else you have to do in order to get your message through, and I never know you tried to contact me.

Which is exactly what happened with Jay's response to my "Help!" e-mail. The spam filters at Seagate sucked in my "challenge" message, so I never got his response.

Last week, puzzled by the silence and frustrated by my interactions with the baffled tech support team, I manually added Jay Pecheck's e-mail address to my whitelist. No sooner had the Backup Reminder gone out than I had a message saying "Didn't you get my earlier mail?"

So I owe Jay, and Seagate, a public apology, because they weren't ignoring me.

Not only that, but these people know how to make good when there's a problem. First, Jay sent me a replacement Maxtor Shared Storage II drive by next-day courier and gave me the UPS account number in order to send back the dead drive so he could see whether the data might be intact in one of the drives in the RAID setup. Then he decided to throw in two more drives: a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus (500 GB) and a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini (160 GB). Mama Bear, Papa Bear, and Baby Bear, as you can see from the photo.

The first priority was setting up the new Shared Storage II, which I named "Teratides" (4 syllables) because that's the Homeric Greek for "Son of Teras." (You already knew I was a geek, but what you might not have realized is that I'm a classics geek.)

As I said last year, basic setup of this drive is quite simple, though there are a few tricks to remember. When you first connect the drive, you're prompted to ceate a password for the advanced web administration access, but not told that the login is "admin." And when you first create a "share" from one of the machines on the network, Maxtor Easy Manage suggests your Windows login as the name for the share. The problem with this is that my Windows login is my full name, with a space in it, and login names with spaces don't work for Easy Manage. I'd remembered that from last time and used my computer name instead.

There were a few other quirks we ran into during the course of setting up Teratides and then connecting Mama Bear to the USB port to act as a backup for the network drive, but we got them sorted out with Jay's help. For those of you who might be considering getting one of these drives, I'll sum the fixes up by saying that 1) it's a good idea to download and install the firmware upgrade, and 2) when you connect a printer to the MSS-II, don't use the printer software that came with the printer, or it will get confused. I was getting "Communication error" messages from Epson even when documents printed properly, until Jay pointed me at the knowledge base pages that explained how to do the printer setup. (This required uninstalling all the Epson printer software, which in turn required several passes through add/remove programs, both before and after disconnecting the printer.)

Communication with the printer is still a bit slow--there's a perceptible pause between the time I send the "print" command and the time the printer actually starts working. But the documents all print just fine, and now my housemate can use my printer even when I'm not home and have taken my laptop elsewhere. (Yes, she has her own printer, but mine does 13"-wide documents.)

A few of the issues I ran into almost certainly stemmed from the fact that I hadn't removed the old Maxtor Easy Manage software before adding the new drive. Easy Manage has been somewhat updated since then, in order to make it play better with the Maxtor Manager software that comes with the OneTouch drives. That's all been straightened out, and the scheduled backups to Teratides are running properly, as are the backups from Teratides onto Mama Bear.

Those are a little trickier to track, as the interface is a bit lacking, but it's possible to see that drive by going to "My Network Places," where it shows up with a long Unix tag: "MaxBackup_Maxt_1_2HAA0GP3." The backups themselves are .tar.gz files (that's a compressed Unix format), unlike the files on the Shared Storage drive, which are direct copies mapped into the same folder tree as on my C drive. If this sounds a bit obscure and confusing, it's deliberate. You're not supposed to mess with those backup files, because they won't do you any good if you accidentally delete them.

When we went to bed on Saturday night after setting up the new drives, we noticed that the (very bright) white LED on the front of Mama Bear was gently pulsing in a sleep rhythm. The Ur-Guru loves LEDs (they remind him of home), but I may turn it off after he goes home. To do that, I have to disconnect the OneTouch Plus from Teratides, connect it to my laptop, use the Seagate software to turn off the lights, and then reconnect it to Teratides, so I might just decide not to bother. I'm starting to get used to it, and at least it's not yellow.

So that's the news for this week. Seagate is in fact both paying attention and concerned about its reputation—and my data, too, for that matter. I'll be back next week with a discussion of the new Safety Drill software that comes with the OneTouch drives, and I'll keep you posted on whether Jay manages to recover the data from the late Teras.

Technorati Tags: Maxtor Shared Storage II, seagate, Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus

I Need a Backup Blogger: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 10-06-07

Okay, be honest: who forgot to back up last week? Anyone?

That's the "Does anyone actually need me?" question. Because if you've all got your backups automated by now, does it matter whether I actually write this reminder? Do people even notice if I don't produce one?

Not that I'm trying to let myself off the hook for not producing a post last week, mind you, but no one on my less-than-enormous mailing list (backups are never going to win the e-zine popularity contest) wrote to ask where I was last week. (I was at the Podcast Expo in Ontario, California, having a great time but with scarcely time to check my e-mail, never mind compose a Backup Reminder.)

Just because I was on the road doesn't mean I didn't back up. I took my new FreeAgent Go drive with me in a pocket of my laptop case, and it worked just fine. The Ur-Guru took all six of his Western Digital XHDs--and a lot of pictures, which you can see on Flickr if you search under the tag "newmediaexpo2007." We heard more than a few people mention what they did to back up their photos and their audio and video files, but mostly it came down to DVDs (which they were trying to get away from) and external hard drives. Nothing really new there.

Nothing new from Seagate about my dead Shared Storage II, either. Oh, I had a bit of back and forth with the tech support team, who were baffled by the serial number I gave them and asked for a photo of the label and a proof of purchase. Um, guys? My point was that I didn't purchase it at all. After I explained that and sent them everything they asked for, they decided to pass the buck to another division and told me they'd get back to me, which they haven't.

Suggestions for more reliable NAS drives to replace the late Teras are welcome.

I also did a comparison test of Norton Ghost 8 versus TrueImage 9. The Ur-Guru has been using TrueImage on all his systems (actual and virtual) for some time now, and he suggested I try it. First I did a Ghost backup of my hard drive. It worked the way it always does, and took a good while but performed as expected. The TrueImage backup projected that it would take somewhat less time, but I got a strange error message in the middle, even though everything thereafter appeared to work normally and TrueImage told me it had completed the backup successfully.

"I wouldn't trust that backup," the Ur-Guru said. Well, no, not if I had to try to restore my whole system from it. So I'll stick to using Ghost 8 until I find something that works better.

But why TrueImage should work for him--and many others--and not for me, I haven't a clue.

I'll conclude on a humorous note. The Ur-Guru and I attended the Halo 3 launch party in Silicon Valley on September 23rd. The only game I play on my computer is Solitaire, but I knew the guy organizing the party from the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology.

In addition to the gaming competitions, Microsoft was showing off some of its other projects, including the new improved Hotmail and the Silverlight/Popfly combination. We were talking to the Hotmail guy and I asked him what they did about backups.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. "I know the answer to that question," he said, "but I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you."

Grading the F Drive: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-03-07

I haven't had a chance to check out ION Backup yet, but I did manage to investigate my new FreeAgent Go drive further, and to copy the data from the dying X drive onto the new F drive. (Designating it F, for "FreeAgent," seemed obvious, particularly since that was the default letter Windows assigned to it.)

One thing I discovered in the course of checking out Seagate's drive management interface was that it's possible to turn off that annoying yellow light. Click the FreeAgent Launcher icon in the system tray, select "Utilities" from the pop-up menu, and then choose "Adjust Drive Lights." Whereas the X drive's green light indicated drive activity, and flickered more or less in time with the drive's spin rate, the three-inch-wide, half-inch-high light on the FreeAgent Go doesn't seem to indicate anything except that the drive is getting power. That much light for that little information is overkill.

The case I had for the X drive was also equipped with a bright blue "cooling light," the purpose of which was to help dissipate excess heat. I rarely saw that light, because the drive didn't get particularly hot. The new drive is also reassuringly cool to the touch, and you can adjust the sleep interval from 3 minutes all the way to "never."

As I mentioned before, the new drive has twice the capacity of the drive it's replacing. Even after I painstakingly dragged all the files over from the X drive (which took several tries, as the connection kept dropping, and a couple of hours, because the 80 GB drive was almost full), I'd only filled in 46% of the space.

Checking Out Ceedo

Since nature and I abhor a vacuum, I thought I'd fill a few of those empty megabytes by checking out Ceedo, the software which is designed to make the FreeAgent(TM) Go mimic your computer. As I had suspected from reading about it, Ceedo is the hard-drive equivalent of U3 for memory sticks. Not only does it work almost exactly the same, displaying a list of programs and options in an approximation of the Windows Start Menu, most of the programs available for installation are the same.

Where a U3 memory stick shows up as two drives, however, the FreeAgent(TM) Go only occupies one drive letter, with the Ceedo program files in a subfolder. Like the U3 launchpad, the Ceedo easy access menu displays your remaining drive space along with the list of programs. Ceedo also makes it clear which programs are being run from Ceedo rather than Windows, by framing the windows with an orange outline. (You can change the color, but orange is good for warnings and stands out against the blue theme I use on Enna.)

You can also buy something called Argo, which lets you install any Windows program on your Ceedo drive. The idea is to install it on the portable drive rather than on any one computer. The up side is not worrying about single-user licenses. The down side is the lag time created by the USB 2.0 connection. Although I have found copying data to and from the FreeAgent(TM) Go drive satisfyingly fast (faster, certainly, than the 10/100 network connection to my Z drive), and although the drive spins at 5400 RPM instead of the more standard 4200 RPM of my two internal drives, it always takes longer to access external drives. That could lead to a noticeable and irritating lag time when using some of these programs, particularly if they require a lot of read-write functions.

And while there's a long list of Argo-compatible products, including Dreamweaver, Quicken, and Nero Burning ROM, not a single Microsoft Office program is to be found on the list.

FreeAgent™ Tools

For me, Ceedo and the programs it lets you run are mostly a distraction, because I already have the U3 memory stick and I'm much more likely to carry that around than the FreeAgent(TM) Go. My primary interest was in storage space, though I wanted a drive portable enough to take on a vacation or business trip. I think Ceedo would be quite useful for those without laptops, or who regularly shuttle between a computer at work and a computer at home.

For the backup-obsessed, Seagate's own FreeAgent(TM) Tools are more interesting. (Unlike U3, which has Disk Hero, Ceedo doesn't offer a backup program.) Folder Sync is designed to update the files on your FreeAgent(TM) Go whenever you change them. If you take the drive from one computer to another, it will update the second computer with the files from the FreeAgent drive.

Presumably because of the automatic-sync function, you can't back up your Outlook .pst file using Folder Sync. That restriction means I can't use Folder Sync as my sole backup tool for this drive, so I went back to Karen's Replicator and updated all the jobs to copy files to the F drive instead of the Z drive.

The only problem with this is that synchronized files don't get stored in the same folders as other documents, so I now have two copies of some of my files. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because I can revert to the previous day's file if I really mess something up, and only the files I'm currently working on are in the Folder Sync directory. It's pretty much impossible to have too many copies of important client files, at least until the project is over.

Rather like the backup program that came with the Maxtor Shared Storage II, Folder Sync has a fairly limited set of features. It's not even as configurable as Replicator, which is freeware. But it's easy to set up and it does what it claims to do. I'm not about to object to having one more backup tool at my disposal.

There's one other function of FreeAgent(TM) Tools that I first noticed while exploring my C drive: you can encrypt files by right-clicking on them. This works on files stored on any drive, at least once you've installed FreeAgent(TM) Tools. But there's no blanket password-protection option for the drive itself, the way there is with U3. You can, however, password-protect Ceedo. That works much the same way a Windows logon does: it can keep you from using the programs, but doesn't prevent access to the contents of the drive.

Best Features

So far, the things I like best about the FreeAgent(TM) Go drive are:

1. 160 GB (twice the size of the X drive)
2. 5400 RPM (faster than the X drive)
3. Only one cable (even though it uses 2 USB ports)
4. Real-time Folder Sync
5. 5-year warranty

And the only thing I really don't like about the drive is that yellow light. So I'm giving the F drive an A-.

Is Your Data Leopard-Proof? FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 07-27-07

Sometimes things converge. Then they usually fall on your head. So far this week’s convergence has not resulted in any injuries, but it may provide my readers some amusement and even be of some use.

The first thing that happened was that I got 1) a blog comment and 2) a couple of e-mails from Nic Darling, “the marketing guy” at UniversePoint, the company that makes ION™ Monitored Backup, which I’ll be reviewing in a future Backup Reminder (probably next week or the week after). Nic directed me to the list of “inane design suggestions” he made to the CEO when first hired by UniversePoint. The suggestion that particularly caught my eye was number 4:

“The software should be leopard proof. I realize that this will be difficult as leopards can swim AND climb trees, but I know you can manage it. (Man, I just really want to stamp NOW LEOPARD PROOF on a software package).”

One reason the idea of “leopard-proof” backup software appeals to me is outlined in an article in yesterday’s Wired entitled “Disaster Planning is Critical, but Pick a Reasonable Disaster.” The author, Bruce Schneier, points out that an effective disaster preparedness plan isn’t the one that equips you to ride out a quarantine in the event of the avian flu pandemic which never materialized or enables your company to continue to function after a direct nuclear strike which obliterates the entire continent (in which case you and your customers are probably all dead anyway). “In general, you can only reasonably prepare for disasters that leave your world largely intact. […] Disaster planning only makes sense within the context of existing society.”

Backing up your data is only one part of disaster preparedness, but the same basic principle applies. Most of us can’t provide for every conceivable contingency, but some contingencies are more likely than others. If you live in California, like me, it’s reasonable to plan for both earthquakes and fires. If you live in the southern US, it makes sense to plan for hurricanes. In most places, it’s worth considering the possibility of theft, though the security of the building which houses your computer equipment will affect the likelihood of that problem.

All of those possibilities are a good reason to have some form of off-site backup. What form that takes and how often you update those backups depend on your budget, the frequency at which your data changes, and how valuable it is to your company.

So where does leopard-proofing fit into that scheme? The Ur-Guru and I did meet a leopard once, but it was much more interested in the flock of wild turkeys walking through the field than in coming into the cabin to chew on our computers. Even apart from the difficulty a leopard would have getting into a data center, it’s hard to see what motivation the creature would have for taking a bite out of a hard drive. None of my computer equipment is even large enough to provide a reasonable heat-source to a leopard.

Making the equipment cat-fur-proof, now, that would be an accomplishment. It’s a challenge to hermetically seal a computer case and still allow things (like your network cable) to be plugged in. And I suspect most of my readers are far more likely to face marauding housepets than hungry leopards. So it’s worth making sure that your backups are safe from furry family members.

Which reminds me, Seagate has clearly made an effort to make its FreeAgent Go drives positively cuddly. The stickers sealing the anti-static wrap on the drive and its USB cable are bright yellow and say “Hello!” The installation guide says “This won’t take long” on one side and “Please enjoy” on the other. Oh, and let’s not forget the sticker on the outside of the box that says “160 Glorious Gigabytes.” (I am not making this up.)

When I bought the X drive, it was an unformatted, naked drive from Toshiba which I had to install in an enclosure and then figure out how to format. No such worries with the FreeAgent Go. Unwrap it, connect the two-pronged USB cable, and presto! You have a drive. Actually, you have a Welcome Screen and a Start Menu courtesy of Ceedo, and the option to install the FreeAgent software and to set up your drive like a giant U3 USB stick.

That’s not what I want this drive for, and indeed I’m not sure the built in sync function is really what I need, either, but the fancy options don’t detract from the ease of use and storage capacity. It seems like quite a sweet little drive, and I expect to write more about it when I’ve had time to use it more.

My only objections are aesthetic. The exterior of the drive is black, mostly, but one entire end of the thing lights up in a shade of yellow-orange reminiscent of road signs and school buses. Why this color, which I would expect people to associate with the need for caution, I don’t know. And I’m not sure what inspired the dark brown-and-yellow-orange FreeAgent interface or Ceedo theme. Has Seagate been taking design tips from UPS?

Although, come to think of it, yellow and black is a color scheme associated with leopards.

You see what I mean about convergence?

No One Is Spared: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 07-06-07

In response to my sulk last week about my dying disk drive, one Mac-using friend wrote:

Luckily for me I'm just a humble user now--and I've got a Mac. When I had a similar looking problem some time back it was quickly fixed the next day by a tech at the Mac Genius Bar. A firmware problem; remedied on start-up from the keyboard.

Signed:
Gloating in Berkeley

Of course, anyone who’s been reading long enough knows that Macs have disk failures, too. In case you didn’t, there’s a new article on the subject by Robin Harris over at ZDNet, entitled “Death of a Disk”. It’s actually about the death of two disks, both Macs.

And Apple has a policy of repossessing your dead disk if they replace it, which has rubbed a few people the wrong way, with some reason. But I’m not going to rehash that here.

Macs may or may not have more reliable operating systems and software than PCs. In general, Apple seems to build fairly good-quality hardware. But it’s also worth remembering that the only real reason there are so few Mac viruses is that so few people own Macs. If Apple had a larger market share in computers, there would be more viruses designed to attack them.

It’s possible that I could take my ailing X drive to my favorite repair person and get the problem sorted out. I could, indeed, try putting the drive in a different case myself, and see what happens. (Possibly I could have avoided the on-again, off-again problems I’ve had with it by buying a more expensive case in the first place.) If I were a serious hardware geek, I’d certainly do that. But then, if I were a serious hardware geek, I’d probably have half a dozen 2.5-inch drive cases just lying around my office.

There does come a point at which you have to decide not to throw good money after bad. Not that I consider the X drive a bad investment. The poor thing has been in constant use for several years now, and it’s come along on several trips and thus withstood being squished into overhead bins on airplanes, not to mention surviving my car accident last September.

But having a professional diagnose and correct the problem will almost certainly cost more than buying a new drive which has twice the capacity and a 5-year warranty. And I’d still have a four-year-old hard drive nearing the end of its natural lifespan, which would substantially undermine my trust in it. And you have to be able to trust your backups. So even if I get a new case for the old drive, I’d want to get a new drive.

And in the meantime, I don’t have to panic, because I have the data on two other drives. Some of it is also on CD or DVD. Some of it is in my Mozy online storage account. So even if I can’t recover the data from this drive (and I think I probably will be able to), I’m safe.

The Backup Sulks: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 06-29-07

I have at least half a dozen possible backup topics sitting in my “Backup Info” Outlook folder, from an ill-considered attempt to enact a