backup

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

Many times when systems have troubles that may take an extensive amount of troubleshooting to sort out, the easiest solution is to perform a system reinstallation. Before doing this, though, it is always advised to have a backup of your system (or your data at the very least); however, in instances where you cannot boot your system, this may seem impossible to do. Despite this, if you have a system that cannot boot but you need to back up, there are some options available to back up the drive before wiping it clean.

The first thing you will need is … Read more

SugarSync, the popular solution for browsing, backing up, and syncing your files across multiple devices, is now available on the Android platform. If you're not familiar with the program, its concept is simple. Download SugarSync on all of your computers and mobile devices, and select which files and folders to sync. Then voila, access your files and folders from any of your devices, or through the SugarSync Web site. It's a super convenient service that you probably won't truly appreciate until you try.

The mobile app installs and syncs in seconds, provided you already have a SugarSync … Read more

Over the years I've shared a variety of DVD rippers, but most of them were designed to copy your movies to other formats: iPod, Android phone, MPEG-4, and so on.

Digiarty Software's new WinX DVD Copy Pro was built for DVD backups. It can clone a disc, turn it into an ISO image file, or convert it to MPEG-2.

The program normally costs $35.95, but today only, you can get WinX DVD Copy Pro absolutely free.

The software comes courtesy of Giveaway of the Day, a great source for freebies like this one. There are no strings … Read more

The trash in OS X is generally used to delete items, but because items can be placed in the trash without being immediately deleted, people commonly end up storing items in the trash. When this happens it may be difficult to remember exactly where the items originated from on disk, so if you empty the trash and then need to recover a document it may be difficult to locate it using Time Machine. You can use Spotlight searching from within Time Machine to try to locate the file (using Quick Look to help this procedure); however, there are times when … Read more

This is an update of a deal I posted last year.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you don't make regular backups, you're asking for trouble.

"I'd like some some trouble, please."

"Why, certainly. Please wait a moment while I destroy your financial records, family photos, music library, work documents, and other irreplaceable data."

"Rats. If only I hadn't asked for that!"

I know backups are a pain, but all you need is some decent software and one of the dirt-cheap external hard drives … Read more

Disk Drill for Mac is an easy-to-use data-recovery tool with a limited free version and more-robust (and more expensive) Pro, Expert, and Enterprise packages. The free Disk Drill Basic can help you protect your computer from future data loss (whether accidental trashing or as the result of more serious hardware problems), while you'll need to pay for at least Disk Drill Pro if you've already lost data that you need to recover.

What sets Disk Drill apart is its slimmed-down interface and almost painfully user-friendly documentation. If you're looking for a data recovery app with a good … Read more

Android doesn't offer a native backup service, so it's easy to ignore the need to do so. But don't wait until it's too late to start thinking about backing up your phone. Many of us rely on our phone cameras to snap day-to-day photos of our lives and save text messages to have some of the most important conversations. So before a thief swipes that phone, or a spilled cup of coffee bricks it, follow these tips:

Google has your back. Go to Settings > Privacy, and make sure that "Back up my settings" … Read more

iPhone owners who store files online through Mozy can now access those files remotely courtesy of the company's new iPhone app.

Released last week for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, the mobile version of Mozy allows users of the service to retrieve and view their online files directly on their mobile devices. Before you can use Mozy on the iPhone, you need to set up a Mozy account and then install the client software on your computer from where you back up your files. Once that's done, you can access any of those files on your mobile … Read more