If you have a need to do a simple file backup where you need to keep a certain number of historical backups, a simple utility to take a look at is Gammadyne’s Backup9.

The BACKUP9.EXE utility will maintain a number of backups (9 by default) of a file. [For example] foo.bar.bk1 is the most recent backup, foo.bar.bk2 is the next most recent backup, et cetra.

This utility is ideal for a simple “rotating” backup system where the oldest backups are automatically purged. If you were to use this utility in combination with my backup script (tooting my own horn) doing a full backup each time, you can have a completely automated backup system where as much history as you need can be kept.

If you do all your emailing via POP where your messages are stored locally only, one thing you might want to consider having is a backup email account. This way in the event something goes wrong or you accidentally delete an important message, you can have access to your messages.

Of course you will first need to have another email account. I would recommend Gmail, but any account will do. Then you just need to have a copy of your messages redirected to the other account. Note that redirecting is different than forwarding because it preserves the full email header (subject, date, time, etc.).

You can set up a rule to automatically do this in Outlook (look in the section titled “Automatically redirect incoming messages to another e-mail account”) or if you use Thunderbird you can use the mailredirect plugin. Unfortunately, the Thunderbird plugin does not automatically apply to incoming messages, it must be done manually. For other email clients, Google is your friend so a quick search should get you what you need.

Another benefit to doing this is if you use a web mail account, you can login from anywhere and view all your messages.

If you do not already have a backup process in place (don’t worry, I am not going to harp on their importance… you already know) and are looking for an easy and free solution, check out FBackup.

Like most backup software, you configure your job and schedule a time for it to run. However, FBackup offers several features which are not always available with free programs:

• It’s free for personal and commercial purposes.
• Backup with standard zip compression.
• Run actions before/after backup.

There is an extensive collection of screenshots you can view to get a feel for how the program looks and works.

Something interesting to think about is how long data will last, because as everyone knows, nothing is forever.

Here’s a rundown on how long you can expect the media you use to last.

"Media" defined: Data storage on something physical that you own, be it hard disk, optical, flash or tape. I don’t list floppy diskettes because nobody uses those anymore.

Assumptions:

• You are using the media a minimum once per week and when not in use is disconnected and/or unpowered from the electronic mechanism it uses to write data to and stored (ex: you take the DVD out of the drive, put it in a case and store it).
• You are physically storing your media in a dry place at room temperature (72° F / 22° C).

Hard Disk

A production-use hard disk usually has a life span of 3 to 5 years. Some last longer, but trust me there is a reason why most hard drive manufacturers usually do not have hardware warranties that go beyond 5 years.

A hard disk used for backup purposes lasts longer because it isn’t used as often. You can assume the HDD will last at least 7 years. But bear in mind that is an assumption.

As a short-term backup solution, hard disks are a good choice. As a long-term solution, not so much given their relatively short life span.

For more information, this really old (but still relevant) post from our own PCMech forums will give you tons of useful info concerning the life span of a hard disk drive.

Optical

Optical media that you use is CD, DVD, the now-defunct HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Assuming you have a decent CD/DVD burner drive, the life span of optical media almost exclusively depends on how well the disc was made.

Premium-grade media can easily last 10 years. And no, you won’t find it at Wal-Mart. The best possible writable CD/DVD media you can buy is manufactured by Taiyo Yuden. A Google search will reveal where to get some if so inclined. It is lauded as the best of the best. That’s because it is. And yes, you’ll pay good money for it too.

For the rest of us, there’s name brand and generic optical media. You can expect name brand (Memorex, Verbatim, etc.) to last about 5 years. Some of you out there will get 7 to 10 but I personally wouldn’t put that much faith into this type of media.

Concerning generic, the plastic may separate from the aluminum in less than a year. Not a good choice.

With optical media, yes, you get what you pay for concerning life span. No question.

Tip: It is better to store optical discs in jewel cases instead of books. Natural problems (like pages of discs sticking to each other from sitting there too long) can happen with those fold-out books.

Flash

It has been speculated that flash based media, such as a USB stick, will last 8 to 10 years easily. This is because there are no moving parts, the heat it generates is minimal and the way it connects and disconnects to a computer is nearly impossible to get wrong (and therefore almost impossible to break).

What most people will encounter with a USB stick in the future is expiring the amount of times data can be written to it or erased before age-related failure. Most USB sticks will allow one million write and/or erase cycles before it cannot be used any longer.

If a USB stick is used as backup media where it is only used once a week, it is highly unlikely you will ever tap that limit.

But the limit age-wise for data retention is stated to be 10 years and no longer at present.

Tip: You might want to use a label-maker and mark the stick with a date 9 years from now (this gives you enough buffer of time from date of manufacture). Who knows? You might still have it then. And you’ll know the stick will soon fail when the date marked is reached.

If you’re thinking, "How can I be sure USB will even be around in nine years?" It will be. Even if it is replaced by another technology, you will still be able to access the data on it somehow.

Think of it this way: Right now nobody uses floppy diskettes any longer, yet you can still buy a floppy diskette drive and disks easily. At worst, USB flash drives will end up like that. Woefully obsolete, but still accessible.

Tape

This is probably going to surprise a few of you, but premium grade tape backup can last 50 years. Sound ridiculous? It’s not. This method of backup is usually only used by large enterprise and government IT centers.

Tape is one of those things that is about as old-school as you can get when it comes to data storage. True, the technology has advanced, the cartridges are built better and the media can store much more and is more reliable, but the method of the way it works is still essentially unchanged.

Tape media is still readily available, but for those looking for the "big guns", what you would want is certified 30-year tape media. The one notch after that is the premium 50-year. Yes, it’s overkill for most people (and wickedly expensive), but if you want something that lasts longer than anything else, tape is basically your only option.

For those who think tape backup is dead as a doorknob, I beg to differ. Maybe it’s dead as a consumer option, but in enterprise it’s still widely used. Maybe you’re not enterprise, but you can use it. In fact, tape is still the best bang for the buck long-term storage media there is.

If you think tape may be right for you, here are a few things you should be aware of:

First, tape decks do require cleaning. The way to clean is with a tape head cleaner cartridge. The heads will need to be cleaned periodically to ensure proper data writes.

Second, transfer speeds are defined differently but you can assume they’re going to be on the slower side. No, they are not molasses-slow as tape drives were years ago because we’ve got USB connectivity now, but it is true they’re not lightning quick, nor have they ever been.

Third, tape is very particular to format. There’s DLT, SDLT, 1/2-inch, LTO, 4mm, 8mm and so on. When shopping around for a deck, pay strict attention to format and how easy (or not easy) it is to acquire media for it.

Will there ever be a long-term backup solution better than tape?

The only media I know of that could potentially outlast tape is the internet itself. But obviously the internet is not physical media. In fact it’s not even physical. The storage of the internet is termed as putting data "in the cloud". However there are more than a few out there that would rather have media stored safely in a closet or attic rather than on some distant server run by someone else.

Chances are you’re more comfortable with the "un-clouded" way.

What’s the most convenient solution right now?

Tape may be the longest lasting, but USB sticks are the most convenient.

You can most likely fit every digital photo you’ve ever taken on a 4GB stick. And that’s under $15 to acquire.

You can most likely fit every email you have on a 2GB stick. And those are under $10.

As long as you remember to swap the sticks out once every 8 to 10 years, you’re in good shape.

That is unless you leave one in your pants pocket and run it thru a wash cycle while doing the laundry.

What do you use for backup media?

Do you use CD/DVDs? USB sticks? Tape? The internet itself? A combination?

Let us know by writing a comment.

Typically, prefaced before anything which requires you to make a change to your Windows Registry, you see a warning which basically says “be careful because if you do something wrong you can mess up your system”. This is absolutely true.

Whenever you make a change to your registry, you should create a backup first. You can do a full registry backup by using System Restore, but in most cases a simple key backup is good enough. This is done easily inside of RegEdit:

1. Select the key (folder) where you are making changes in the registry from the left side.
2. Select File > Export.
3. In the dialog, just enter a file name which is descriptive of the key you are exporting. You can also confirm the location is correct at the bottom of the dialog (Selected Branch).
4. Confirm the REG file saved correctly.

That’s it. Now if you need to undo your change you can simply import the file you just created. This is a simple and effective way to help recover simple mistakes if you are dealing with the registry.

Of couse, this method is not 100% fool-proof. For example, if you modify a system value and reboot your system, this method may not be an ample recovery model. However, for minor system tweaks it should be sufficient.

The advice to back up your data is something that is probably said at least once every 5 seconds by some random person on the internet.

Every person who says this is 100% correct. You should back up your data often.

However what isn’t ordinarily covered is how to back up your data that you have out there on the internet, i.e. external or cloud data. Examples of this are blogs, photos, e-mail and anything else you specifically store online-only.

Here are two glaring examples of the worst possible scenario:

Continued

Y’know ordinarily I don’t crown the title of "best" to any particular application because there’s usually something better. However, this… THIS… is the best mail backup I’ve ever used.

KLS Mail Backup is free and it will backup your mail so easily it’s a wonder someone didn’t write something this good sooner.

Observe:

Not only will KLS backup your mail, but it does the Address books, certificates, saved passwords/forms (which you can uncheck for security reasons if you want) and a whole bunch of other stuff.

In addition, it will backup from Microsoft Outlook Express, Seamonkey/Mozilla, Windows Live Mail and/or Mozilla Thunderbird.

Talk about cool.

Even better: It’s not just backup - it will restore mail back to a client as well.

When you run this thing, it will gather all you tell to get and pack it up nice and neat into a single ZIP file. After that you can toss the file on a CD or flash drive.

It literally doesn’t get any easier than this.

Note to Hotmail users: Now you have a way of easily backing up all the mail in your account. Just use the Windows Live Mail client to download all your Hotmail locally, run KLS and ta-da - it’s all backed up!

For Gmail users: You can do the same thing. Just use the mail client of your choice to download via POP and back up the mail.

THIS is how mail backups should work. Easy, simple, effective.

I give this app two huge thumbs up.

Get it here: http://www.kls-soft.com/klsbackup/mailb_index.php

While it’s true the Desktop Flickr Organizer for Linux can’t be beat as far as backing up your Flickr account is concerned, I was searching for a way to do the same in Windows and yes, I found a way. Continued

When you backup your data (if you are not currently, you should be) you should always place the backup files on a drive other than the source. The reason is simple, if your source drive fails you need to restore the files from another drive.

While you can use an external hard drive or dump the files to a server (if you have one set up), the method I prefer is just storing them on a flash drive. Flash drives are rediculously cheap and have more than enough space to hold your backups. I use (tooting my own horn here) my home grown backup script to collect and compress the files I want to backup. Everything is automated via the task scheduler so it is a true ’set it and forget it’ method.

On a 2 GB flash drive, I am able to keep about 3 months worth of backups… so if I ever need to go back to a previous version I am all set.

Modern day home computing is not as it once was. Not-so long ago it used to be that in order to bring the most potential out of your computer box you had to use proprietary software.

Any app that runs solely on a specific operating system is proprietary. And yes there’s still lots of this stuff out there.

For the past few years I have been slowly transitioning the stuff I do on the web to being as cloud-based as possible. You’ve heard the term "cloud computing" so much that it probably makes you sick to hear it at this point - but you have to do it if you expect to make smooth transitions in the future from computer to computer.

If you don’t start transitioning now it will be very painful and stressful to get it done later.

A plain English description

"OS-less" means to be able to do what you do on a computer without the need for any specific operating system.

Using myself as an example, here’s a few things I do:

For my photos I made the decision to push those all to Flickr. It’s web-based. I can access it on any computer using any OS.

For my e-mail I decided to switch over to Hotmail (or to be more specific, Windows Live Admin Center). Previous to that I used self-hosted IMAP and before that plain ol’ POP. I can get to my mail from anywhere on any computer using any OS in any web browser - and it’s all there. It’s backed up and readily accessible.

For important documents that I need to hang on to (and even the not-so important ones), I push those over to Google Docs. This acts as my backup that is just as accessible as my mail is. Once again it’s accessible on any computer/OS.

Are you still in the stone age?

If you’re still using apps that are OS-proprietary and local to your computer only, you run the risk of losing all the data you have without warning. Let’s say for the moment you’re really good at backing things up routinely. What if your hard drive fails and the backup doesn’t work? What then? You basically curse and swear, then realize you lost it all and start from zero.

Nobody wants that to happen.

And what happens when you buy a new computer? Do you really want to go thru the process of reinstalling all your apps all over again, configuring them and wasting hours of time when all you want to do is just get going?

Of course you don’t.

Is it possible to go completely OS-less?

Not at present. However you can move over a significant chunk of what you do to cloud territory now. The more you move out there, the better.

Get your docs, photos and e-mail out in the cloud

No matter how much of an old fuddy-duddy you are (as in the type who positively refuses to try anything different), bear in mind the transition is stupidly easy to do for docs, photos and mail.

Docs

Google Docs is still your best bet. Get an account and upload them. Don’t worry, they’re all private uploads unless you specifically enable a share-out option (which is off by default).

Photos

If you use Flickr, get Windows Live Photo Gallery (Windows), Flickr Desktop Organizer (Linux) or Flickr Uploadr (Windows, Mac). Get a Flickr account and start uploading.

If you use Picasa, the Picasa client is well known to be super-awesome and super-easy to use. Works in Windows, Mac or Linux. Uploads stuff easily. It’s a no-brainer.

E-Mail

This is the one people fear the most - especially those who use POP and are under the impression it would be absolutely impossible to move hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of mails to another account.

Your two best bets are Gmail and Hotmail - and yes you can move all your mail over to either.

The short version of how to do it:

All modern e-mail clients support multiple e-mail accounts.

With Gmail, you can set up the new account alongside the old POP account in Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail or any number of other clients that support IMAP.

With Hotmail, you use the Windows Live Mail client. It will easily import all your old mail from Outlook or Outlook Express. Then you set up your Hotmail account alongside your POP account.

No matter which method you choose, once you have the multiple accounts set up you just drag and drop the mail from the old to the new. All the timestamps are saved and nothing is lost. Everything is moved over including the sent mail, attachments and so on. Furthermore the mail is instantly accessible on the web as well as in the client at that point via hotmail.com or gmail.com depending on which you chose.

Once done you no longer have to rely on your computer to send, retrieve and store your mail. All of it is in the cloud, backed up and accessible at any time. You can also still use the mail client if you feel like it. You can get to your mail either way when you push it to the cloud.

The long version of how to do it:

I go into grotesque detail on how to do this and it would take way too long to explain here - so watch for another article on it soon!

I am telling you now - start transitioning to the cloud

Said honestly, don’t put this off. You’ve got your docs, you’ve got your mail and if you take photos, those are most likely local to your computer box as well. Push this stuff out to the cloud (that being the internet).

You can continue (obviously) to perform local backups, but when (not if) the time comes that you get a new computer, the painful process of moving everything over will be so much less painful when you realize you can just open up a browser and get to everything - instantly.

Yes it’s true that there will be things you simply can’t push to the cloud (yet), but for the stuff you can get out there - do it.

Do it if for no other reason to have a secondary or tertiary free backup. The price is nice and all it costs is a small amount of your time.

This is the first time I’ve found something Linux can do that Windows (or OS X for that matter) cannot, that being to backup a large Flickr account.

I’ll explain.

My paid Flickr account has 1000+ photos in it. I use it routinely, realized it was frickin’ huge and felt the need to back it up.

The only semi-decent tool available is flickredit. But there’s one huge problem with it. If you have a ton of photos it simply won’t work. Sure, if you want to do periodic backups of say 500 photos or less it will do just fine. But over that mark it will just stop in the middle of a backup. You’ll have to start it all over again and do it piecemeal style (such as 50 at a time, etc.)

Very, very irritating. And slow.

Linux on the other hand has this thing called flickrfs. It mounts your Flickr account as a drive so-to-speak. However it is very "linuxy" and the installation may scare off some (read: command line crapola).

The alternative? Use Desktop Flickr Organizer. From what I understand it uses flickrfs and there’s absolutely zero command line crapola to deal with. This is directly available from Add/Remove in Ubuntu and looks like this when you go to get it:

When installed it’s available here:

When you run it, it looks like this:

Said honestly, if you use Flickr, you will love DFO. I’ve never seen its equal. It uploads, it organizes, it sorts, it tags, it does sets (and creation), it has search and most importantly - it downloads with no problems whatsoever.

I was able to download my entire Flickr photostream - which is 1000+ photos - on first try and DFO didn’t skip a beat. I was impressed.

Like with any application you use to access Flickr, you have to have your Flickr account "allow" it first. This only takes a few clicks of the mouse and you’re off to the races.

This is one real-life example of something Linux can do that no other OS can. In addition this Linux app is without a shadow of doubt better than any Windows or OS X offering for Flickr photo organization/backup. Normally whenever I see a Linux app it’s usually behind - but not this one. It’s way ahead.

If I want to backup my large Flickr account with no issues, I have to use Linux to get it done. Is this good or bad? Well if you’re a Linux user, not bad a’tall I’d say.

If you are a Windows Vista user, before you start looking around for an external tool to backup your important data, consider using Windows Vista’s built-in backup tool. Before going any farther I need to point out this feature is only included with Vista Business and Ultimate (much like the way the NTBackup tool was only included with XP Pro and not XP Home). Other versions do not have this function built-in.

That said, if you do have this tool available to you here is a very simple walkthrough on how to set up a backup plan. Overall the tool is pretty simple and should be self explanitory. In addition to covering the backup tool, Outlook users should take note of the the walkthrough on how to create a backups of your email data file (PST).

There are hundreds of tool out there (some free, some comercial), so regardless of what backup method you use, the important thing to remember is you need to be backing up. You may think you don’t need it until it comes time when you really need it.

One thing you might not consider when making your backups are your Internet bookmarks. Odds are you probably have quite a bit of time invested in locating and organizing these backups, so having a backup is a good idea.

To accomplish this task in the most popular browsers, here is a handy reference. The process is pretty easy and is something which you should run occasionally. Since you probably do not add new bookmarks daily (maybe you do though), just a simple backup of your bookmarks and then copying the resulting file to a flash drive or emailing it to yourself is prudent.

Not too long ago I posted a tip on how to maintain a mirrored directory using Robocopy (this is still the method I prefer by the way), however if you are more a GUI person as opposed to a command line person, then Microsoft SyncToy is for you.

This free tool has an extensive feature list which you can view via the link above, but the quick description is as follows:

SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

I did some quick searches on using SyncToy and I found a rather nice walkthrough which explains (using lots of screenshots) how to set up a process to automatically sync files.

From what I can see, Robocopy can do everything SyncToy does so you cannot go wrong either way. It just simply boils down to which tool you are more comfortable with.

I use Flickr quite a bit and was wondering if there was any way to backup photos from the service using an application of some kind, and it turns out there is.

flickr backup will easily connect to your Flickr account and you can pick’n'choose whatever you want to retrieve. You can backup individual photos or sets. And yes you can mass-select easily.

In this example I’ll show how to backup a set:

Above: These are the sets in my photostream. I checked off the first one and clicked the "Backup Selected" button at the bottom.

The next screen asks me where I’d like to backup my photos to. I can choose to backup direct to the hard drive or CD/DVD. I can even ZIP them up if I want to (very nice).

I chose to backup to the hard drive and clicked the "Start Backup" button at the bottom right.

This is what the backup process looks like.

Once the download is finished, that’s it. Your Flickr photos are backed up. Simple and easy.

The application by the way is free.

Download flickr backup here.

So you have a process in place to backup your data? Wonderful. But if disaster strikes, are you confident you can recover the data from your backups? If you are not sure, now is the time to check.

I have seen, on several occasions, where people do have a backup system in place, but the data inside the backups is not recoverable. Usually this happens because the wrong data was backed up (X data was supposed to be backed up, but Y data was instead) or the data itself was backed up incorrectly (locks blocking the file, etc.). To prevent this, you should occasionally verify your data backups. Try to recover either the most important or some random data from your backups to make sure everything works as expected.

Taking a few minutes every so often gives you good piece of mind your data backups are working as they should and you won’t be stuck with 2 disasters.

When Apple OS X Leopard (10.5) was launched, one of the biggest marketing points was the inclusion of Time Machine.

Time Machine is the backup program that goes on automatic when using OS X and backs up every file on your Mac automatically to an external hard drive. If you ever want an old version of a particular file, just find the file in Finder and then activate Time Machine. You’ll take a very graphical trek into time (pictured to the left) where you can find the old version of the file you want and restore it.

But, did you know that Windows Vista has something somewhat similar to this? Yes it does and it is called Shadow Copy.

Shadow Copy is built into all versions of Windows Vista, although only Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate have the necessary GUI setup to work with it from Explorer. But, the idea is that it allows you to browse back in time and restore a file from a past restore point. Shadow Copy is more or less the replacement for System Restore in Windows Vista. If you are running Vista, it runs by default as a Windows service.

Using Shadow Copy, you can restore a single file relatively easily. To do so, right-click on the file you wish to restore. You can also right-click on an entire folder. Then choose “Restore Previous Versions” from the context menu. You’ll be presented a list of dates for which you have restore points for the file. Click Open to view it as it was on that day. To restore, just hit Restore.

If you are not running a version of Vista which has this built into the GUI, you can still use the system by downloading a utility called ShadowExplorer. Using that program, you can browse to a particular restore point in the date dropdown, then find the file or folder you wish to restore and select Export.

An Equivalent to Time Machine? No.

On the Mac, Time Machine backs up every hour. In Windows, it creates restore points on a schedule you set. Usually once a day. Any file you wish to restore would need to be tied to a restore point. A restore point is just that - an entire set of files for your computer so you could restore the whole thing. So, given the nature of it, this is certainly NOT Time Machine. Apple’s Time Machine is much easier to use and is much more thorough in the backups it does.

Also, Time Machine is set to back up to an external drive. Windows Shadow Copy creates restore points on the system hard drive. This defeats the point usually because hard drive failure is one of the more common reasons to have this type of system in place.

So, Shadow Copy certainly should never be your replacement for a good data backup policy. Mac users, Time Machine can be your backup policy and you need not worry about it aside from that.

At work, I have a network location set up and have pointed each user’s ‘My Documents’ folder to a folder with their name on this server. The benefit to this is I can backup just a single location nightly and it includes each user’s documents in the backup automatically. Of course, users love to put virtually everything on their desktop which, obviously, does not get included in my nightly backup.

To remedy this, I have created a Robocopy command which mirrors the user’s desktop to a folder on the server:

robocopy “source_directory” “destination_directory” /V /S /E /COPY:DAT /PURGE /MIR /NP /R:10 /W:30

The source is the desktop folder and the destination is folder on the server. The great thing about this command is that the file/folder structure is mirrored every time the command runs. So if the user deletes/renames files, the server location is updated appropriately. Nifty.

I have this command scheduled to run on each user’s computer at 11:30 every night, which gives the task plenty of time to complete the sync before the server backup starts.

When Apple came out with OS X Leopard, one of the more innovative things they included with it was Time Machine. This is, of course, the automated backup utility with a snazzy graphical interface which automatically backs up and archives your Mac. You can restore your entire Mac if needed or simply a single file. To use it, though, you need an external hard drive.

So, Apple released the Time Capsule. It is an Airport Extreme Base Station coupled with a hard drive. In other words, network attached storage (NAS) with a pretty face.

Continued

One widely unknown feature of Outlook Express and the Windows Live Mail client is how easy it is to backup your mail locally (to which you can then burn to CD/DVD, put on a USB stick, etc.) Even if you’re not using Hotmail, you can easily back up any POP or IMAP account by a simple drag’n'drop to a local folder. You could even backup Gmail easily using the WLmail client.

See video below for details.

Any computer user worth their salt will stress the importance of data backup. Too many people either don’t think about it or put it off into the “someday” category, leaving open the possibility that you’ll get burned. Anybody, though, who has been caught with a hosed system and inadequate backups realizes the cold, hard importance of it.

So, it is a given you need to back up your data. The question is: how?

Continued

As I have briefly mentioned in my previous posts, for my day job I am the primary technical resource for a small business and as a “side gig” I manage web servers for hosting companies. One of the great benefits to this is I have become quite adept at developing command line scripts, or “batch” scripts.

One of the most common, and well suited, applications for a command line script is data backup. Command line scripts can be automated to run at any time without any human interaction and are only limited by… well, nothing. Continued

If you run a lot of Windows scheduled tasks, particularly on a server, it is very worthwhile to have a local account dedicated to nothing but this. The reasons being:

• If you run the task as a normal user account and that user happens to be logged when the task starts, the process runs in the current user’s session. If the user logs out while the task is running, the task quits and doesn’t complete.
• Changing an account password doesn’t effect the scheduled task account at all.

When you create a scheduled task account, it is best to assign it a long random password since you will not be using it hardly and to lock down the permissions as much as possible. For example, you would probably want to eliminate remote login for this account or just give it “Backup Operator” permissions.

I’m going to say first that Apple’s Time Capsule - even never having used it - is a good product for the fact it’s easy and it’s got a crapload of space for backing up your stuff. A problem that has plagued computer users for years is that there’s really been no easy backup solution, but Time Capsule truly does make it easy.

I personally couldn’t care less if what’s in it is considered "server grade" or not. The fact it’s simple is in itself the main selling point.

However..

Apple has stated - quite directly - that the hard drive in it is "server grade".

Server grade, for all intents and purposes, means "not consumer grade". It should be a hard drive that is used in server-specific applications that can take a pounding.

As it turns out, the Time Capsule absolutely does not have a server grade hard drive in it.

What hard drive does it use? Hitachi Deskstar. Very off-the-shelf. Very consumer grade. Big and huge, yes, but still nowhere near server-grade HDD specs.

So anyway, the big deal is that Apple states Time Capsule has a server grade HDD when in fact it doesn’t.. unless Apple thinks "server grade" means "a big honkin’ hard drive". The term is relative. But as anyone knows, "big" doesn’t translate to "server grade" - at all.

Will this hurt sales?

I doubt it.

It’s still the easiest consumer backup solution there is.

Just as a quick comparison:

If you bought just a 1TB Hitachi Deskstar HDD alone, the highest price is $319.00.

The Time Capsule 1TB version is $499.00.

If you have a Mac Pro, buying the drive outright and using Time Machine is the better option. You save $180 and it’s faster (no wi-fi lag).

If you have an iMac and/or Macbook Air/Pro, Time Capsule is the better option because of the wi-fi and the fact you can’t add hard drives in those applications, so you have to have an external solution of some kind. Time Capsule is it, no question.

And if anyone’s wondering why I put "duh" in the title of this post, the moment I saw Time Capsule I knew from the get-go it’s not server grade. I mean, c’mon, seriously.. is a little white pretty slab supposed to have the same ability as Xserve? OF COURSE NOT.