Backblaze now lends you a hard drive to get your data back

Backblaze is an online cloud backup service that allows you to keep your entire data safe (unlimited storage) for $5 per month, and now it makes it even easier to get your data back by lending you an hard drive to speed up the data recovery process.

Dropbox deletes 8000 backup photos from user

If you're a regular reader, I hope you'll know how important backups are. But the truth is, most people only really start to care about backups after experiencing the despair of losing valuable data. Today, I bring you a case that shows that using Dropbox for backups might not be as foolproof as you'd expect.

iCloud Backups - the Missing Space Dilema

The iCloud backups are an amazing service for iOS users. If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you'll love to know that your device keeps a regularly updated backup in the "cloud", allowing you to easily get everything back in working order should you ever need to replace/upgrade your devices.

The only problem arises when you start receiving warning emails, that your allotted iCloud space is almost filled!

Apple offers each and every user 5GB of free iCloud space (you can buy more space) and in my case my backup was nearing 4.9GB. I found it odd to be using so much space. Though I have several hundred apps installed (some over 1GB), the iCloud backup doesn't count Apps as occupying space. Only your personal data, as photos, and app settings/data, do. And while I have 3.7GB of photos on my camera roll, I couldn't imagine what might be using up the extra 1GB+ of space.

What could be the cause for the low space warning on iCloud? How could I make my backup size get back under control?


Digging deep into what was using space on the iCloud backup I found some strange things.

For starters, there were some Apps that shouldn't be using up any space that were gobbling up hundreds of Megabytes.

For instance, my much loved Pano (for panoramic photos) was using over 80MB of space.

That was quite odd, as I had no "pending" photos in it to process at a later date, and all processed panoramic shots are saved to the iOS photo album, meaning it shouldn't take any space at all. Having no other choice to clean it up, I removed and reinstalled the App... and it immediately went back to a much more manageable 400KB.

There's one other quirk I found in iCloud backups. When you remove an App, its backup remains in iCloud. That is kind of neat, because it allows you to remove and reinstall apps at a later date, and get everything back to the way you had it before. But it also means that simply removing an App won't free up your iCloud backup space.

So, you need to do the awkward steps of: removing the App, going to iCloud backup storage management, serch for the offending app (which might be hard to find among hundreds of others), disabling its backup - which will effectively free the space on iCloud; doing a new iCloud backup sync; and then reinstalling the App (and making sure it's backup setting is enabled once again).


I had to do that several times, for instance - for some PDF reader Apps, where I had hundreds of files using up a lot of space. I deleted most of the files, greatly reducing the data size of the App... but the iCloud backup didn't update until I did those steps.

I think things could be simpler if iOS simply asked if we wished to keep or remove the iCloud backup of any app when we removed it, just like it asks if we want to keep the scores in game center for games.

There's also one last issue - but that is up to developers - there are apps that use up several megabytes of data for things that they could download from the internet once reinstalled. For instance, it makes no sense for a Twitter client App to use up more that a few KB of data for its settings - but there are some that use up megabytes of data.

And worst of all, just how many of those Apps you have installed might be using up valuable backup space with "junk data" like the one I found in Pano?

The good part is that if there's any serious issue, it will eventually pop up to the top of the list, where you'll immediately notice it. The bad part is... you shouldn't have to.

Synchronicty - Sync and Backup Files and Folders

You've probably already face a situation where you'd like to have your Windows computer copy/backup/sync a bunch of files and folders - but all the programs you've found were extremely complicated and wasted a lot of resources... If that's the case, you'll love to hear about this Synchronicity, a very small program (only 180Kb!) that will make you forget about all the rest.

Besides, it's completely free (and open-source) - and it's so simple it might even fool you into thinking it's not powerful enough for what you want to do. But I urge you to give it a try, and I can guarantee you won't be disappointed.

It's never too much to tell you about how important it is to implement a "trouble-less" backup routine into your daily life. Just imagine how you would react if you lost all your childrens/parentes/holiday photos you have just on your hard drive with no other copies? Also, manual backups are probably good once, or twice... until you get fed up with it and stop doing it.

So... don't tempt your luck and give your hard drive the power to ruin all your digital life. Try this Synchronicty for size, and allow it to take care of your backups!

[Synchronicity]

File and Folder Sync and Backup

Tired of manually managing multiple copies between different computers, hard drives, USB Pen drives, etc? Always worrying you'll overwrite a more recent file with an older one, or forgetting to backup that photo folder you've just moved to your USB thumb drive?

I don't need to remind you just how important Backups are. At any moment, your computer hard drive or flash memory card might just decide not to work any more - leaving you with nothing but a panic attack. That's why it's so important to create a non-annoying backup routine you can follow every single day, that will ensure your more important digital data is always safe if/when things go wrong.

Back to the file and folder folder synchronization topic, on the top of the list I present you this amazing, free, and open-source program: Synkron (available for Windows, Mac, Linux . and in a portable version as well).

This Synkron is quite powerful and will certainly cater for any need you might have - just take a look at its advanced settings page and you'll see what I mean.

But even for the casual user, it will prove more than useful in synchronizing document folders to/from your external backup hard drives or USB pen drives.


Besides this Synkron, you might also give the following programs a try (nothing like trying a couple of them before deciding which best suits your needs):

• Syncplicity
• AllwaySync
• SyncBack

Memory Card Backups to Portable Disk

Now that we're approaching a new Christmas season and a new New Year, it's time for people to use their digital cameras even more intensively.

That's why we once again have to deal with memory cards and - worst of all - memory cards filled with irreplaceable photos.
So, how do you manage your photos? Do you buy extra memory cards to handle all the shots? Do you carry a laptop around to manage it all?

If none of that works for you: how about acquiring a small portable device that can automatically copy your memory card contents to its internal hard disk?

A device like this Ex-Pro P2S Sata "Picture 2 Drive" allows you to transfer all your photos to its internal 2.5" Sata disk. No more nuying expensive large capacity memory cards, nor carrying your precious laptop around with you at all times.

It handles pretty much every type of memory card out there: Memory Stick (MS) ,MS Duo, MS MagicGate, MS Magic Gate Duo ,MS-ROM, Memory Stick Pro (MS Pro) ,MS Pro Duo, xD Picture Cards (XD).MMC II ,RS MMC, Secure Digital (SD), Secure Digital SDHC (All Cards), miniSD, CF Compact Flash, Microdrive. (E pode ser usado também como USB Card Reader.)

And best of all, it has a very attractive price: on Amazon you can find it for about 40 Euros (device only) or 80 euros with a 250GB hard drive included.

Seems a ve

Low Cost Petabyte Storage

In a time where I - myself - am still looking for a reliable, simple, and cheap way to keep my data safe (my main computer crashed a few days ago, and I'm still painstakingly slowly recovering data from it) this blog post jumped to my attention: talking about BackBlaze solutions to its large-scale storage needs.

To start with, lets analyze how much a petabytes costs these days (if you don't know what a petabyte is, its 1000 Terabytes, and 1TB equals 1 Gigabyte; to put it in perspective, 1PB equals about 227 thousand DVD-R discs.)

As you can see, the cost difference between the raw hard drives and what most companies charge you is substantial - which is why BackBlaze decided to build their own storage solution (just like Google does) and now shares their secrets with all of us.

The solution they come up with is their BackBlaze PODs, each holding 67TB and costing just $7,687.

The access to all this data is done - not via iSCSI, NFS, SQL, or Fibre Channel - but *exclusively* via HTTPS.

For all the details and a complete hardware and price list for these pods be sure to read the full post on how to build a petabyte storage solution at low cost.



I wouldn't need that many space for myself... but I'm glad they decided to share it with us so we can use some of their ideas. :)