Resources

If you’re a photo buff, you’ll flip for FlipDrive. This online storage and backup solution is terrific on its own. However, the fact that you can store and share your photos online for free adds icing to the cake!

Overview

Think of FlipDrive as a virtual hard drive located on the Internet. With the basic plan offering a full 20GB of storage space, the possibilities are endless. You can safely and securely store your data and access it from any Web browser - anytime, anywhere. In addition to storage and remote access, you can also choose to share select files with your friends, co-workers, and family members.

Features

• Online Storage - If you need massive storage, FlipDrive delivers with plans ranging from 20 to 100 gigabytes of storage space.
• Photo Albums - FlipDrive’s unlimited photo storage and album sharing gives you additional space over and beyond your plan’s limit. As long as you place your photos in the photo storage area, you can store as many photos as you want without worrying about running out of space. Create albums and share them online.
• Calendar - In addition to storing data and photos online, you can store all of your important appointments and tasks in the FlipDrive Calendar. Now, you can access your calendar from any Internet connected computer.
• Address Books - Keep your contact information readily available by using the FlipDrive’s address book. Create an address book and share your photos and documents with your contacts as needed.
• Favorite Sites - Ever have a computer crash and lose everything - even your Internet bookmarks? The Favorite Sites feature prevents this from happening again. Simply store your favorite sites in FlipDrive and access them from any computer.

Benefits

Using FlipDrive as an online storage and backup solution makes sense. Should disaster strike and render your computer unusable, you will still have access to your stored files. For example, storing photos online ensures that your precious memories are protected from disasters such as house fires, floods, and theft.

Not only is FlipDrive a smart way to protect your files, it’s also a smart way to access them, especially if you use multiple computers.

How it works

FlipDrive offers a free 30-day trial with regular plans starting at about five dollars per month for 20 GB of storage.

Recommendations

FlipDrive is an excellent, secure online storage repository on the Web with the added benefits of unlimited photo storage, online calendar, and favorite sites. At a whopping 20 GB for the basic account, you won’t outgrow FlipDrive anytime soon.

Feedback

Do you have experience with this product? Please share your thoughts or ask questions below …

Box.net is a cool Web site for storing documents and files and collaborating with other users. Several different account levels are available including a free account, individual user account, business account, and enterprise account. Obviously, each account type has different features and storage limits.

Mapsco USA offers dozens of different software products such as CD-ROMs containing detailed US maps. Depending on the software you have, you can customize and print maps. Certainly, you can upload files to Box.net provided that you have enough storage space and share those files with other users. However, if your intention is for each user to be able to access the Mapsco USA software and customize their own maps, that isn’t going to work. Box.net doesn’t host applications uploaded by users.

To upload individual files to Box.net, all you need to do is log in and click on My Files. From there, click the Upload button, designate a storage folder, and click Add Files. You can also drag and drop files into this space. Assuming you have an account with enough storage space, the files will upload. The free box.net account provides you with a full one gigabyte of storage. If you need more storage space to accommodate large files, then you’ll need to upgrade to the Business account which provides 10 gigabytes of box.net storage.

Once your Mapsco USA files, or any other file that you need to share, are uploaded, you’ll need to invite “collaborators.” Click on the Collaborators tab and then click the Add Collaborators link. Enter the e-mail addresses of each person that you want to share your files with. Designate the folder that they can access and then grant permissions such as whether or not the user can view files or edit them. Depending on how many users you have and how many separate collaboration folders you need, you may need to have a Business account rather than the free Box.net account.   

Box.net has a variety of additional services and features such as the ability to download files to your iPhone and edit documents online.

I have a SimpleTech External hard drive. Three nights ago, all of my data on this drive disappeared and I really want it back. What can I do? I have tried shutting down and restarting, but nothing worked. Please help.

The only thing that I find more frustrating than losing my data from my hard drive is to have a computer that won’t turn on. Fortunately for those of us who somehow seem to have the worst of luck when it comes to keeping our data right where we want it, the world of modern technology has created a few wonderful retrieval tools that simply ooze with their greatness.

I can only sing their praises from personal experience because I have also lost important files and images. In fact, my daughter’s engagement photos mysteriously disappeared from the digital camera only to be retrieved by a similar program to the one that I am going to mention to you.

The SimpleTech External hard drive can be thought of as a peripheral hardware device. Even so, missing data from it can easily be retrieved with a data recovery tool. ParetoLogic’s Data Recovery Pro offers a free scan that you can use to see if your files are recoverable. As long as you haven’t reformatted your SimpleTech External hard drive or overwritten every file, you should be able to recover all of it.

If the files are found, they are recoverable and you can purchase the full version of ParetoLogic Data Recovery Pro to retrieve them. I suggest that you try this out since it should do the trick. I love this product and so do my kids. Visit the website for ParetoLogic, select the category for products, and select ParetoLogic Data Recovery Pro.

Click on the link “How to Download.” This will take you to the directions to download your free scan of ParetoLogic Data Recovery Pro. Take note that different browsers require a different process, so make sure that you select the right one.

When using Firefox and Netscape browsers, click “save file” and save the application to your desktop. For Windows-based browsers, click “run.” Next, run the free scan for recoverable files. It doesn’t take more than a moment or two for Data Recovery Pro to come back with the results.

A list of files, documents, images, emails, and more appears, showing you everything that is recoverable. Click on the small plus sign in front of the category to see a fuller outline.

You will be able to see the entire list of the data that ParetoLogic Data Recovery Pro has discovered hidden within your computer system. Hover over an item for more information. If you see the data listed that you want to retrieve, I suggest you purchase this program and use it to get your data back. You can also look into the standard version, ParetoLogic Data Recovery, since it is also capable of recovering your missing data.

 The good news is that technology exists that can go into storage devices such as hard drives and USB sticks and recover “invisible” data - even if the device has been reformatted. The bad news is that in this case, some of that data may be corrupt and therefore unrecoverable.

First, let’s look at why data recovery tools can recover data from formatted media. When a disk, memory card, USB stick, and other storage devices are reformatted, the data isn’t wiped clean like we’ve been lead to believe. Rather, the file system is cleaned up. That is, all of the indexes and references pointing to the data are removed and replaced with empty indexes and tables. The references are gone, but the data remains. Now, when the operating needs to write data to the device, for all intents and purposes, the device is empty.

Once formatted, new data can be written to the device’s “free space.” This means that your old data, which is now flagged as “free space,” can potentially be overwritten by new data. If this happens, then the old data is gone for good. Currently, you have a window of opportunity because you haven’t yet written new data to the USB stick.

Data recovery tools, such as ParetoLogic’s Data Recovery and Data Recovery Pro, install on your computer and can read any device that shows up as a drive letter, making it possible to recover data on a USB stick like yours. However, there’s some concern about the fact that the computer shut down with the stick in place as it’s possible that the USB stick didn’t shut down properly.

Similarly, unplugging a USB stick without stopping it first can cause problems. While it is a pain to go through the steps of clicking the “remove hardware” link, stopping the device, and clicking OK, it is a necessary evil. Otherwise, if you simple unplug the device, you could be interrupting write operations. The device may have been writing data or updating its file system.

Whatever the cause, something is now amiss. Your computer can’t read the USB stick because something is corrupt. Hopefully it’s just the reference table and not any of your important files.

Here’s what to do about it. First, download a free data recovery scanner and scan your USB device to see if the software can “see” your data on the device. While the scan is free, the recovery isn’t. This saves you money because if the USB stick is not recoverable, then you can find out without making a purchase. If the tool finds your data and indicates that it is recoverable, then you’ll likely be overjoyed! Depending on the product you choose, you’re looking at about $40-$50 should you decide to buy the data recovery tool and recover your USB stick. This is a real bargain if you have irreplaceable files.

We Trust and Highly Recommend BOX.net for all your Online Data Backup, Storage and Access needs!

I’ve heard the phrase “your data is only as good as your last backup” countless times, and it’s true. After all, if you need current data, old backups are practically useless. Sure, an old backup can help you rebuild and they’re better than nothing, but the fact remains that failed backups can be a major problem if you need to restore something.

Fortunately, most backup utilities report back to the user when the backup has failed so that you know that something interfered with your backup and that you need to do something about it. Unfortunately, these notifications don’t always give you obvious clues. In this case, a basic alert has appeared in your Taskbar telling you that something went wrong. But what?

My guess is that either the media device is full or that a file or program was in use, and thus skipped. Other common reasons for backup failures include an inability to detect the storage device, unexpected interruptions during the backup, and an inability to mount the media.

Back when I worked in a real office, I was in charge of the nightly backups and often arrived in the morning to find out that a backup failure had occurred. In my case, I had set up the backup software to e-mail me a notification. More often than not, the reason the backup failed was because one of the workstations hadn’t been properly logged off beforehand and that the point of sale system was open on that workstation. What happened is that since data files were technically in use, the backup utility would skip them. Unfortunately, these data files were the whole point of having a backup in the first place. The same is true of backups on home computers. If you leave Microsoft Money open and the backup utility is scheduled to back up your Microsoft Money files, it probably won’t because the files are in use.

The other problem with backup failures I frequently ran into had to do with full tapes. Once the tape was full, future backups failed. Simply replacing the tape, solved the problem. The same is true if you’re performing a backup to a CD-R, USB stick, external hard drive, or other storage media. If the storage media is full or doesn’t have enough capacity for the current backup, the backup will fail.

While these are common reasons for backup failures, you probably don’t have to guess, your backup utility most likely has some sort of event log or reporting mechanism that offers details about what caused the failure. Start by opening the backup utility and then start looking for “reports,” “logs,” “exceptions,” “alerts,” or any other options that make sense.

Once you find the report, it should tell you exactly what went wrong. From there, you can take the necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence.  

Attachment too large? Use Box.net instead! Send files securely and Fast

Will your business survive a PC Disaster? Carbonite Online Backup protects your important files. Start your free trial!

We Trust and Highly Recommend BOX.net for all your Online Data Backup, Storage and Access needs!

External Data Storage Tips for USB and Firewire

Using external drives to quickly expand the storage options on a PC or a Mac is an increasingly common computing task. Plugging in a disk drive from the outside beats opening the computer and struggling with screws, mounting, and arcane tangled cables. Computer and electronics store shelves are ripe with storage devices of all sizes, shapes, and capacities from the diminutive keychain flash drives to multi-disk storage towers. However, there is more than one way to attach an external disk to a computer. Which should you choose, USB or FireWire?

The familiar Universal Serial Bus (USB) is nearly ubiquitous in modern computing. From mice and keyboards to scanners, printers, and joysticks, virtually any input or output device can be implemented as a USB device. Newer computers feature half a dozen or more USB ports as “legacy” serial and parallel ports disappear. Swarms of devices use the available five-volt power from a USB port to charge or operate. And you can operate a disk drive from a USB port, too.

USB devices come in two types, indistinguishable from the outside: USB 1.1, which is capable of low-speed operation and is sometimes confusingly called “Full Speed”, and USB 2.0, which is much faster and is generally referred to as “High-Speed”. Most data-type devices like disk drives and scanners require a USB 2.0 connection for full performance. At 480 megabits per second (mbps), USB 2.0 easily outpaces the languid 12 mbps offered by USB 1.1. One must defer to the specifications of both the device and the computer to which it will be attached to determine which version of USB is in use; some computers might even have ports of both types.

FireWire, also called iLink (on Sony devices) or IEEE 1394 (in the generic sense, “FireWire” being an Apple trademark), also comes in two flavors, though they are easily identifiable by their connection cable. FireWire 400 (also known as 1394a) features a rectangular 6-pin cable and operates at 400 mbps; FireWire 800 (1394b) has a square 9-pin cable and runs at 800 mbps. FireWire doesn’t have the device support of USB, but doesn’t really need it since it’s designed primarily for the high-speed data transport required for disk drives and high-end capture devices (video cameras and some scanners).

Although USB 2.0 runs at a speed nominally better than FireWire 400, real-world benchmarks show that during sustained file operations, FireWire is dramatically faster than USB — by 33-50%! FireWire 800 is even faster, though real-world results might not match the 100% improvement implied by the raw reported speed. The advantage FireWire has over USB in large data transfer is one reason most (if not all) digital video cameras only support image capture over FireWire. USB devices are good at bursty data transfers, making it a fine choice for most scanners, digital still cameras, and small disk drives, where data is moved in a short period of time.

Choosing between USB and FireWire is usually a pretty simple choice: often, devices don’t give you a choice. But presented with the option to buy an external disk drive with USB or FireWire (or better yet, both), consider the purpose of that drive and which connection type is a better fit. If you’ll be storing and editing video files, FireWire is the obvious best choice, but for storing many small files accessed infrequently, such as backups or text documents or MP3 music libraries, USB should work just fine.

Successful computing is often about making the right choice, and at least this one is now a little easier.

Attachment too large? Use Box.net instead! Send files securely and Fast