backup

UPDATE June 20, 2011: This offer has now ended.

It's Friday again and we have yet another offer for our CNET readers. Trend Micro is typically well-known for its antivirus and Internet security software, but with cloud backup services getting ever so popular, the company wants to get in on the cloud action too. There are several other solutions out there, but SafeSync has a strong security background of Trend Micro backing it up. Traveling? No problem. Access your music, movies, photos, or documents away from home and on your mobile devices. SafeSync keeps your files synchronized and up-to-date … Read more

The introduction of the iCloud at today's WWDC keynote symbolizes Apple's shift to cloud-based backups, syncing, and moving files seamlessly among all your devices, whether you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Mac, or PC. Just like Google's offerings (Doc and Calendar syncing, and Picasa, as examples), iCloud lets you sync media, apps, music, documents, calendars, and more automatically. It's important to note that Android has had the download and sync features since February of this year.

As usual at Apple's keynote events, Steve Jobs was not the only person on the stage demonstrating the latest and greatest from Apple. Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, came up to talk about multitouch gestures on the Mac, for example. Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Apple software, then came up to demo some of the new features of full-screen apps. But when it was time to talk about iCloud, it was Steve Jobs who did the talking. In other words, however you feel about iCloud, it seemed to be the "main event" that Apple seemed to be most excited about.… Read more

Supply of Apple's Time Capsule hardware is reportedly becoming scarce in the days ahead of the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, a sign that a new version of the product could be just around the corner.

Time Capsule, which was released at the beginning of 2008, combines a wireless router with a hard drive, giving users a way to store files on the device. It's also tied to Apple's built-in Time Machine backup software, which made its debut as a part of Leopard. That software is able to tap into the Time Capsule to wirelessly store backups … Read more

When discussing options for backing up or migrating data to new Macs, we frequently mention cloning as a way to do this. While Time Machine and similar backup schemes can create fully restorable backups of your system, the backups themselves are not bootable, so in order to use them as such you must restore them to an available hard-drive partition, which can take a number of hours to complete. Clones, on the other hand, do allow for immediate booting to the backup, and therefore are quite appealing as an option.

Cloning is when you basically make a mirror copy of … Read more

When Apple introduced iTools (which later became .Mac and finally MobileMe), the package included an option to back up files to your online iDisk. Apple's Backup utility could transfer user-defined batches of files to the iDisk as well as to local drives and optical discs. Backing up data online so you could access files from anywhere was appealing; however, the option of automatic backups to online storage has never really taken off. One big reason for this is Apple's backup option for OS X has switched from Backup and similar utilities to Time Machine, which is designed as … Read more

In yesterday's article on protecting your Mac from recent malware developments in the Mac community, I mentioned briefly to exclude specific download folders from your Time Machine backups or other backup options to prevent any downloaded malware installers from being retained in a backup. In response to this article, MacFixIt reader "Harry" wrote in wondering what to do if malware or other unwanted items do get backed up to Time Machine.

Time Machine runs every hour, so if you have installed the recent malware or another unwanted item and your backup routine has run, then it is … Read more

Hot on the heels of its iOS counterpart, online backup service Mozy just released an app for Android. That's a major perk for anyone already using the service to archive their data.

Mozy, of course, is the quiet desktop tool that automatically copies your critical files to the cloud. I've been a user for years, and just this week I had to take advantage of it after a sudden system failure. Worked like a charm.

The app, which is free, enables you to access your files on the run. You can, for example, retrieve Word and Excel documents, … Read more

I'm hoping this doesn't sell out as quickly as I think it will.

As I've said before, I have mixed feelings about security and utility software. Sometimes I think they do more harm than good. Plus, there are plenty of freebies that do the job just as well. (I'm thinking specifically of Microsoft Security Essentials 2.)

On the other hand, I always love getting something for nothing, especially when it's a software bundle worth $190. And there's value in choosing pro-grade software backed by live technical support.

Fry's is offering Norton Internet Security 2011 (three-user license), Norton Utilities 15 (three-user license), and Norton Ghost 15 absolutely free… Read more

The other day my awesome cousin Rachel and her equally awesome boyfriend Marc related an all-too-common tale of woe: several years' worth of home movies recorded on their hard-disk camcorder had suddenly and inexplicably disappeared. The sad part? They'd never taken the time to offload the videos from the camcorder to a PC.

If you've ever lost personal data--photos, documents, or whatever--you know how devastating this can be. (And take it from me: this is not the moment to say, "You should have made a backup!" You can't kick a person harder than he's … Read more