backup - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• The good, bad & ugly of Dropbox authentication error

  Online storage service Dropbox made an embarrassing error Monday, turning off password authentication for millions of users.

• How to keep local access to data during Cloud outages

  The Amazon cloud services outage that knocked out several popular Websites last week raised questions about the reliability of the cloud, but the general consensus is that it works if you plan for failure. Like any good business plan, a good cloud plan should include provisions for failure, including plans B and C, and plenty of backups.

• What your business can learn from Amazon Cloud outage

  The servers are back up and users can once again check in on Foursquare and ask questions on Quora, but the legacy of last week's Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) outage will live on and provide important lessons for businesses as they look to cloud computing for their IT future.

• Leaving your job? Take your data with you

  Nothing lasts forever, and in the 21st century, most people's employment is anything but guaranteed. What should have some permanence, however, is our digital footprint -- the body of data that constitutes the true center of our professional lives. In this article, I'll explain how to protect the integrity of your most valuable business data as you make the transition from one job to another, or from job to jobless.

• Backup disasters: How you can avoid them

  As poet Robert Burns famously put it, the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley, that is, they often go awry. Im thinking of those lines as I struggle to clean up a backup and subsequent hard drive replacement that went seriously wrong.

• Google Gmail snafu lesson: Backup, backup, backup

  Gmail is hard at work restoring service to about 40,000 Gmail users after a software bug deleted their e-mail messages, folders, labels and filters. So, while things are looking good for those users affected by the bug, this episode proves, once again, that while Web-based services may be robust, you still have to take responsibility for your own data.

• Using more than one backup program

  Ata Amiri asked if using two separate backup program will interfere with incremental backups.

• Building a better business backup system

  As with buying insurance or taking vitamins, committing to data backup is a hard sell. Everyone knows that storing records safely in more than one place protects the health of a business, but many companies fail to establish backup systems that will keep them running if disaster strikes.

• Oracle offers file management package for cloud

  Hoping to service the growing market for cloud computing systems, Oracle has packaged two file management software programs into a single integrated offering, called the Oracle Cloud File System, the company announced Monday.

• Microsoft delivers enterprise backup tool

  Microsoft's flagship backup and archiving software, Data Protection Manager, has come a long way since we first tested it in 2005.

• Back up your Android phone with MyBackup Pro

  As Android phones become more powerful and more useful, they also store more of your important personal data. Losing that data can be more than a minor inconvenience, and given the fragility of electronic devices, it's something that's likely to happen at some point. MyBackup Pro is an app that will give you peace of mind if your phone gets destroyed in a mishap such as an impromptu dip in the toilet or a shattering drop to the pavement. You can schedule automatic backups and restore your apps, data, and settings to a new phone (or to the same phone if the data was accidentally erased) in just minutes. Considering how much time it would take to manually enter such data, this app is a worthwhile purchase at the current price of $5.

• Protect your backup data from Murphy's Law

  Have you ever noticed that insurance seems to operate on the Murphy's Law principle? If you have it, you never need it, but as soon as the insurance is gone a catastrophe strikes. That is pretty much how backing up data often works.

• Protect your laptop

  Laptops can be stolen. Neoflyer asked the PCWorld.com Answer Line forum for tips on protecting them.

• Restore a Windows XP Backup in Windows 7

  Reader Tom is dealing with this major hassle:

• CloudBerry Explorer

  For Web site developers and administrators, cloud storage is an increasingly popular alternative to dedicated servers. In most cases, cloud storage is both cheaper and more reliable. Amazon offers the leading solution with their Simple Storage Service (S3). S3 has a robust set of features, but Amazon only offers a Web interface, which can be quite clunky. This is where CloudBerry Explorer (free) comes in: it replicates and improves on the functionality of Amazon's Web interface in a slick standalone program.