Alternatively pay $4.95 per month for an unlimited backup service!

Its very quick and easy to setup and works on Mac and Windows.

In a nutshell here is how you do it.

1. Setup a backup cronjob on your CPanel - send backup to you Gmail account
2. on Gmail, go to Settings > Filters
3. create a new filter From: <your server’s email address>  – to know it you need to check the backup email you’ve just received from the cronjob.
4. on the next step select the options “Skip the Inbox” and “Delete it”
5. select also “apply to # conversations below” – it will apply the filter (rule) to any existing backup you already have in your inbox

Technorati Tags: backup, gmail, blog, online storage

Last week I had a server’s HD die on me and I suddenly had to rescue some of the newer data that for some stupid reason I had not selected for backup. I found a lot of information out there but none seemed to work untill I came across some simple instructions on using dd & reiserfsck to rescue the data from my dead HD into a .img file and mount it.

The process is slow but works nicely. Please follow the instructions here.

PS: just remember to use — instead of – before the switches otherwise it’s not going to work.

I tried to change the permissions and change the ownership on the files so that I could delete them, but I still didn’t have any luck actually deleting the files.

As it turns out Windows Server 2003 has a file length restriction, well, it’s actually a file length restriction with NTFS, the file system that Windows Server 2003 uses.

File names, including the folder name, must not exceed 255 characters. Because some of our files exceeded 255 characters I was unable to delete the files, although I could manipulate it in other ways.

I solved my problem by moving the deep folders to the root of the hard drive and then deleting them. That worked without fail and I was able to delete all the files that had previously given me the “Can not delete this file” error.

Technorati Tags: ntfs, delete files, can not delete this file, windows server 2003

I dont think you can ever realise how important it is to backup your files until the first time you lose them… I have had many people ask for me to recover data from a crashed computer because they have never backed up their computer. Products are being produced all the time that aim to make it easier and easier for the home user to backup their data. But today I am going to do a little tutorial for people who dont know how to back up data – not only so you can read it, but also so I can direct people who come and ask me to it so that I do not have to explain this over and over!

I hope you find this tutorial easy to follow…here we go!

1)The first step is to determine how much data (or files) you are needing to back up. Generally speaking if it is just documents (like Word or Excel) you will not need a lot of storage to back everything up. The more media files you have (photos, music and video) will mean you will need bigger storage to back up your data.
To find how much data you need to click any given folder (probably my documents because that is most likely where all your files are!) with the right mouse button and select properties, this will tell you how much data is in the file.

2)Below is a rough guide comparing how much data on the computer compared to the different mediums you can use to backup your files. (this is a simplified table – but contains the mediums most commonly used)

This is only a guide. In my opinion the ideal solution is to buy an external hard drive, no matter how much data you have. Currently from ebuyer.com you can buy a 320gb external hard drive for about £65 ($130 USD) which will be plenty of space to back up files for a long time.
What I personally do in addition to using an external hard drive is back up my pictures and music to DVD – because I know I would have a horrible feeling (not to mention be upset) if I lost all of my pictures!

3) To back up to a CD or DVD is pretty much the same. It will differ depending on what software you use to burn the discs. Generally speaking you need to open the program you use to burn the discs (such as neroCD Burner XP (Free)or Roxio). then open a new session and copy all the data that you want into that session, then simply – select go (or burn) and the software will do the rest.

4) To use an external hard drive is also very simple. Some hard drives (such as Western Digital come with software that, when installed, walks you through a simple wizard that sets your options for how often you want to backup and which folders you want to back up.( you just need to remember what time your choose and make sure your hard drive and computer are connected and switched on at that point.

If your hard drive does not this software it is still simple. First open the folder showing the files you want to back up, then in another window browse to the hard drive (in windows go to >my computer and then it will be in there as something like E:\WD USB 2 , WD being the name of the company that make the hard drive) then using the right hand mouse button drag the folders and files you want backed up from the first window into the external hard drive window. When you release the mouse it will give you the option to move or copy the files – choose copy.

There is free software out there called syncback SE that I have written about before. This will also run a scheduled backup between any two folders on any two hard drives – so if the scheduled option would help you – I recommend having a look at this!

There you have it – your files safely backed up – no worries.

If you are only wanting to mange your files on a local hard drive then a great program to use is TreeSize Free.

TreeSize Free provides you with an Explorer-like interface and can also add itself to the right-click context menu in Explorer. It’s helped me a lot in knowing when to archive my photos to CD and also when I need to clean up certain folders like my download folder. TreeSize Free will also allow you to print reports.

I have also found TreeSize Free to be great in helping me to manage our file usage on our Windows Server 2003 File Server. Although not ideal for this, JAM Software offers TreeSize Professional for this, it works adequately for our small office. TreeSize Professional allows scanning of network hard drives and has quite a few different reporting options and more information then the TreeSize Free version does.

Technorati Tags: TreeSize, file manager, Free

I have always been a bit weary of upgrading the primary hard drive where the operating system is located. Previously I would have reloaded the OS from scratch. In this case I really didn’t want that sort of down time, so I started looking for alternatives.

In the end I found an extremely handy software package called Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0. The program is available for download with a 15-day free trial, which is all that I needed for this project, or you can purchase it on Amazon.

All that I can say is WOW. After installing the software, installing the new unpartitioned hard drive as a slave drive and restarting the computer it was seven easy steps to replacing the old hard drive with the new hard drive.

1. Start up Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0
2. Click on the “disk clone” button
3. Selected “Automatic mode” which automatically sizes the partitions on the new hard drive
4. Selected the source disk
5. Selected the destination disk
6. Clicked on “Proceed” and the computer restarted (on reboot Migrate Easy takes over and clones the drive)
7. After Migrate Easy had done it’s thing I shutdown the computer, removed the old hard drive, installed the new hard drive as the primary master drive and restarted the system.

That was it. The computer restarted just fine and after one reboot when Windows detected a new primary hard drive we were up and running like nothing had ever gone wrong. If I had known it was this easy I probably would have upgraded the hard drive in her system a long time ago.

The software also works on Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003, so I probably would have used it at work to upgrade some of our four-year old servers (which we are in the process of finally replacing right now).

Below is a partial feature list for FreeNAS:

1. Built upon FreeBSD 6
2. Configured and managed through a web interface
3. Multiple network connectivity / protocol standards
4. RAID 0 / 1 / 5
5. SATA / USB / Firewire Drives Supported
6. Runs well on low spec. hardware

Below is an excerpt from one of the reviews that we read:

FreeNAS (version 0.66 beta at the time of writing) is an open source network-attached storage solution, which in many ways equals or even exceeds the capabilities of many commercially developed and manufactured products. FreeNAS on an old 400 Mhz Intel Pentium based personal computer with a cheap 100BASE-T Ethernet card and two old IDE hard disks in a RAID 1 mirror configuration equaled the performance of 99% of the commercial NAS products I work with on a daily basis as part of my day job.

This is simply astounding when you consider that FreeNAS is a fledgling open source project. Testing I did in my lab with FreeNAS on a high end Xeon with SATA disks simply screamed. There’s just no other way to describe it. I ran my throughput tests five times before I was sure I hadn’t made some fundamental mistake with the math. I saw $75k performance from a $5k box running a beta NAS software platform.

You can read the full review at The Storage Forum >> FreeNAS: short review. It goes into a lot of depth about the product and comes out with a very favorable review.

Another good review (you need to register to read it) is at TechRepublic >> FreeNAS: Network Attached Storage for the rest of us.

This came about from 3 reasons – my main PC at home crashed – did the lovely blue screen on me and I had to rebuild it and before I could do this – I had to find 30Gb where I could backup all my files!! Ooops

The 2nd reason being the main PC in my house in a bedroom which backs onto my 2 year old sons bedroom and being a newly built house has paper thin walls – so everytime I want to use the PC my son hears my tapping on the keyboard and will not go to sleep – all I can hear is “mama using computer” being called from under his door.

And I guess the 3rd reason is that since I rebuilt the PC I can no longer share the folders on its hard drives – any clues I would be grateful to hear them – so please leave a comment with suggestions!!

So my search goes on for the best NAS out there. Do I go Netgear with space for any sized hard drives (which I will just happen to have floating around my house) or do I go for Belkin with an inbuit hard drive with additional USB slots for adding HDD later… I will keep you posted