backup

Bitcasa moves your hard drive to the cloud

One of the most technically audacious companies I've seen announced itself at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference yesterday: Bitcasa.

Technically, it's a virtualized primary storage company. With this product, your main storage is actually in the "cloud," and because of that, it's pretty much unlimited. Your local hard drive is used--heavily--for the cache. If the technology works, this architecture should give you storage that's just as fast as a local-only hard drive, but with more capacity and reliability. Bitcasa will cost $10 a month with no storage cap for users. (A free version will be &… Read more

How to back up browsing data for nearly any browser

I like Chrome quite a bit, but I know others who swear by the latest Firefox, Opera, or IE browsers. Chrome lets you transfer browsing data easily, but it can get frustrating to share information like passwords, bookmarks, and so on using different browsers. FavBackup is a great, free Windows utility that lets you transfer data painlessly using many popular browsers. Here's how to use it:

Download, install and run FavBackup. (The download page also lists supported browsers, so you may want to check that out first.) Select your browser from the icons presented at the top, … Read more

Free services protect your e-mail

Technologies come and go, but e-mail just keeps chugging along. According to a Pew Internet report released August 9, search and e-mail remain the most popular Internet activities: 92 percent of online adults use search engines, and 59 percent use them on an average day; e-mail is also used by 92 percent of adults online, 61 percent of whom use it on a typical day.

So it's no surprise e-mail scams continue to proliferate. The FBI's New E-Scams & Warnings page is alerting people to scam e-mails purporting to be raising money to help victims of Hurricane Irene. … Read more

Acronis True Image Home backup gets file sync

Acronis, the maker of the arguably most effective True Image backup software solution, announced today the latest version of its True Image Home 2012. Among other features and improvements, the software now offers file synchronization. This is the first time this feature is included in the company's line of disk-imaging products, which are generally designed to store backups in a proprietary "image" format, which requires backup software for the recovery process.

File synchronization, on the other hand, means that the exact copies of the data are kept in real time at different locations. This allows people to … Read more

Windows compression utility made just for Mac

WinZip for Mac brings one of the oldest names in Windows compression utilities to the Mac, and we think they did it right. Featuring a clean Mac-like interface, WinZip for Mac lets you compress and secure your files for both sharing with others while keeping them away from prying eyes. Using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can quickly add files to an archive, then compress them in the standard .ZIP format or create .ZIPX files--a format WinZip says is its smallest compression format to date. Both worked great on our test machines and the ability to password protect even just … Read more

How to back up your Google+ account

Sharing your computer with other people can be detrimental to your personal settings. Unlike a lot of services and features you can customize, Google+ offers the ability to back up your account data in case of tampering.

Once logged in to Google+:

Step 1: Click on your profile menu in the top-right corner (the one with a miniature version of your profile picture) and choose Account settings.

Step 2: You will see the Account overview area. Now select Data liberation from the menu on the left side.

Step 3: Click the Download data button near the top of the next … Read more

Clickfree C6 review: Excellent for the uninitiated

Announced just month ago, Clickfree's C6 portable drive is an upgrade to the company's C2N. The new drive now adds the ability to back up the entire system (imaging) and restore it, in case of a crash or virus infection.

Supporting USB 3.0, the C6 is very fast, topping the charts of portable drives. The drive can also be used to boot the computer, a standard way to restore the computer back to its original working state or move the system to a new hard drive.

On the downsize, the C6 stores backups in a proprietary format, … Read more

Five easy backup devices for home users

Everybody should back up his or her data. You already know that, of course, but sometimes it's hard to remember to get around to it. This is when a portable drive with automatic backup software comes in handy. For you Mac users, a drive that works with your system's Time Machine will do the trick.

Here is our list of the top five backup devices for home users. They may not be the best storage options overall, but they'll make backing up easy. On top of that, they are all very good-looking.

Clickfree C6: This is the … Read more

How to back up your iPhoto library

A computer crash can be devastating, especially when you lose all of your photos. I trust that if you are a Mac user, you are performing regular Time Machine backups, which saves a snapshot of your entire hard drive and stores it on an external drive. For the extra cautious, you can also save a copy of your iPhoto library to an external hard drive or a disc (because who knows--your Time Machine drive might fail one day). Here's how in iPhoto '11:… Read more

How to back up your hosted WordPress site

When was the last time you backed up your hosted WordPress site? Your host likely backs up the entire server on a regular basis, but it's a good idea to keep your own local backups, just in case.

To properly back up your WordPress site, you need to back up all your WordPress files and your database. Here's how to manually back up your hosted WordPress site:

WordPress files

Step 1: Using an FTP program like FileZilla, connect to your blog host (GoDaddy, BlueHost, DreamHost, etc.) with your FTP username and password.

Step 2: After establishing a connection, … Read more