Image courtesy of Synology

You can’t be too cautious these days about backing up your data. Time and time again friends, family and co-workers come to me about trying to recover pictures, music and documents on a failed or virus ridden drive. Some even have their small business data lost when the main computer goes down.

My first advice to anyone is that they should get themselves some sort of backup device, whether it be Desktop Attached Storage or Network Attached Storage and some good software to automate the backups. I have wanted to upgrade my 2TB external drive to a Network Attached Storage Device, but had a really hard time deciding which one to… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Like many folks, I make great use of DropBox for non-sensitive storage options for files I need to access from a variety of platforms. The free storage level tends to work fine for me, but I know many folks who take advantage of the reasonably priced upgrades in storage.

Now AVG, a company best known for making great malware and anti-virus products, has launched a new competitor: LiveKive. The service is similar to those offered by competitors, including backup, sync and more.

Here are the basics: Free 5GB storage account, with 25GB costing $49.99 per year, 50GB for $59.99 or ‘unlimited’ for $79.99 per year as shown below. (I put unlimited in… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I thought of a number of different titles for this post.

One was: “No Use Crying Over Spilled Lemonaide”.

Another was “MacBook Airs and Crystal Light Do Not Mix”.

Another was “Apple, I’m Sorry for all the Nasty Things I Have Said and Thought”

Then there was “I’m an Idiot”

Eventually I settled on simply using “Adventures in Customer Service- Apple and Spilled Crystal Light Edition”.

Here’s my story.

I did not have a good morning. I woke up not feeling particularly great and immediately had a number of phone calls with people who are in the midst of challenging times. I finished my morning coffee and went to get the package that the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

With the recent earthquake, tsunami and issues with the nuclear plants in Japan, the one thing we should all seriously take a look at is a way to back up all that digital media we have accumulated since switching our precious memories to a digital form.  There are some parents that never have taken a picture of their children without a digital camera.  That means no shoe boxes full of pictures to burn or get wet.  Instead, you need to worry about your system and when, not if, your system decides to have hard disk failure or some other problem that causes all of those precious memories to go away.  There are many ways you can do this yourself… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

The iPad is out, and lots of people are playing with this device, which is pretty much a category unto itself.  Some are finding it a great media platform, or gaming platform, or web surfing platform.  And a couple of folks here at Gear Diary are using it almost as a traveling netbook/laptop replacement, decreasing their daily bag lugging load considerably.

And for all of those categories, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Yo, self:  what if my iPad is caught in a fire, or a car crash, or some durn thing, and experiences catastrophic data loss?  What are you going to do then, huh smart guy?”  Well, DriveSavers Data Recovery is there for you and… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Backing your data up to the cloud and living out of the cloud is all the rage.  SpiderOak cloud backup has a lot of features that I have been looking for in an online backup solution.

First, to get started with SpiderOak, you need to download the software for Windows, Mac or Linux and install it.  The version delivered for Ubuntu works on pretty much any version of Ubuntu.  You can install it with standard dpkg commands or double-click on it and us the graphical package manager, GDebi package installer.  Click on install, enter your system password and it installs. Once the package is installed, you just start the SpiderOak client and sign up… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

(image of the Boston Holocaust Memorial Courtesy PhotoDelusion)

While there are those who lament the digitization of everything that has ever been written down, there are some things that definitely benefit from being in e-form. Historical records especially benefit, since they become portable, universal, and searchable. Teleread today reported on one of the most important reasons for this; the International Tracing Service in Germany has completed a large portion of an extensive project to list every person who was documented to have entered a displaced persons camp post-World War II.

The full list is being forwarded all over the world, from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC to Warsaw, Poland, to Jerusalem, Israel. This is an incredible trove of information on what happened to many people post-war, and I hope that it can be used to help trace family histories, as well as a larger history of immigration around the world.

My grandparents met in a displaced persons camp after the war, and while I am lucky enough to have heard their stories firsthand, there are many people who did not know their family members or hear their stories. When I hear about projects like this, and the incredible amount of history that is being saved, it leaves me grateful and in awe of the power of technology.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Here’s another item for the “super-cool convergence item” file I’ve got going.

The Buffalo Dualie lets you sync and charge your iPhone or iPod while simultaneously backing up or storing digital assets on the integral 500GB portable hard drive. As an added bonus, it offers a brushed-aluminum and black soft-touch two-tone finish.

The Dualie works with both the iPhone & the iPod.  In addition to allowing you to store files to its 500 GB hard drive it also offers two USB ports for your other USB powered accessories.  So you get an iPhone/iPod dock, a hard drive and a two-port USB hub all in… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Back in August, I reviewed the HP MediaSmart Server LX195.  I, the resident Linux Geek here at Gear Diary, was pleasantly surprised by how useful the little server was.  Even so, I still thought there was a little something missing from that great device.  HP has addressed a lot of this with the HP MediaSmart Server EX495.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

image courtesy of my-pc-nerd

My heat broke a few weeks ago; luckily it wasn’t too cold in New Jersey and the heating company fixed it quickly. After worrying about keeping everyone in the house warm, I did worry about what would happen to the various electronics. Fortuitously, Drive Savers has released a list of tips on how to keep your electronics from getting frostbite.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Did you just buy a shiny new Touch Pro 2? Or maybe you snapped up an Imagio or a Pure? (Or any other HTC Windows Mobile devices) If you did, you’ll be happy to know that Sprite Mobile has you covered.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

My father’s favorite phrase is “People don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.” I’m quite sure a very expletive laden version of this concept was bandied around Microsoft after the Sidekick backup debacle. So I posed the question to the Gear Diary Team: How do you back up your smartphone data?… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

In talking with people that send text messages (SMS), one of the most frequent things I hear is that they wish they could save some of their SMS messages. Many of them have lost their messages forever if their phone is damaged/replaced/upgraded, or they run out of room and are forced to delete them. There is a very useful application for Android called SMS Backup that helps you save your SMS messages to Gmail so you can keep them forever.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

If you’ve been paying attention to T-Mobile’s problems with Sidekick backups this week, it’s probably made you think at least a little bit about how you back up your own mobile data.  Of course, given the Sidekick’s problems, it’s also possible that you may be a little tentative about the cloud at the moment.

If you’re willing to give the cloud a chance, then Best Buy’s new venture may be of interest.  In conjunction with Dashwire, Best Buy is introducing its own cloud backup service, called mIQ.  mIQ works with Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian S60 operating systems.  The service goes active today (October 12), and you can sign up for a free… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It’s been a bad, bad week for data of all types, it seems…

Macrumors is reporting on a new bug in Snow Leopard that wipes out user data. … Continue reading on Gear Diary ...