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

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?

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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.

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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 account with 1 GB of storage.  If you purchase your phone at Best Buy, the blue shirts will install it on your phone in-store via Best Buy Mobile’s Walk Out Working program.

According to the mIQ website, “mIQ takes the content on your phone and automatically pushes it to a private account on the web. From that point on, what you do on the phone will instantly update on the web and what you do on the web will instantly update on your phone – without you having to ever think about it.” In addition to backing up contacts and calendar data, mIQ also includes enhanced text messaging, photo and video storage and organization, and connectivity to Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr, and Twitter.

For more information, check out mIQ’s website.

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

Some of the biggest challenges with technology and the gear we decide to regularly use is what problem(s) does it solve?  Will it improve my efficiency? Is it cost effective?   Take the challenge of wireless printing, backing up data from multiple computers, and then sharing that data across your network.

This used to require separate pieces of equipment and the frustration time to manually configure each separate item on your network.   As is usually the case with new products, convergence is the name of the game (and Gear Diary loves convergence!).  Let’s take a look at the new Belkin Home Base, which aims to let anyone with an existing wireless network easily print, backup files, and share their data to anyone on their network.

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I recently posted about my love/hate relationship with the Nokia E71x. It’s gotten a bit more contentious lately, due to various and mysterious software issues. Calendar entries that refuse to accept date changes, programs that freeze repeatedly, games that malfunction…it has been frustrating to say the least.

Cue Nokia PC Suite and their backup suite. My first thought was that perhaps a backup and then full restore might smooth out the quirks, plus it would provide an excellent test of the backup system. If that did not fix my issues, I could reset the phone, rebuild it, and then back up my “clean” setup. I’ve done this before on Windows Mobile phones, iPhones and Palm OS devices and have never had a major issue…until now.

PC Suite backed everything up without a hitch. I followed the convoluted hard reset instructions, looked up the code to authorize the reset, and the phone was wiped. I plugged it back in, started up PC Suite, and set up a restore from my backup; it threw out that an error occurred, but the log didn’t list anything. And now roughly 1/3 of my programs are MIA, mail for exchange isn’t working, and I have no idea what else has/has not carried over. Easily the most disastrous backup I’ve ever used.

Any thoughts from the Symbian experts out there? I’m about to drop  kick my phone across the room, so any tips or calming words would be helpful. And let this serve as a warning to anyone else…make sure you carefully investigate any backup system before you attempt anything drastic, and keep careful records of important data in case something goes awry!

Wow!  Where was this when I was in high school?  One of the cool things about being so involved with computers and technology is watching the pace of change.  Dan mentioned that the other day with his look at an old 32 MB card vs his 32 GB iPhone. This change is most apparent in how we keep finding new and improved solutions for old problems.  And the oldest, biggest problem for me is losing data. Almost as long as I have had a computer, I have managed to find new and creative ways to lose my data.  As a result, I have grown extremely interested in the available tools for restoring that lost data.  While online backups are nice, it is still online, and as Toodledo’s recent problems showed, that has its downfalls as well.  What I needed was a fast and easy way to backup my data and physically store it in my house.  What I needed all along was the SeaGate Replica.  Like I said, where was this when I was in high school.  Hit the jump for a closer look.

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Doug and I started using Toodledo at about the same time, and have both become devoted users of the service. Earlier tonight however, he noticed something strange. Either he had completed all his tasks, or Toodledo was down. A quick visit to the site revealed this sad web page…

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I’m a Apple fanboy through and through.  This I admit freely.  But I’m also man enough to admit that not everything Apple does is perfect.

Time Machine, Apple’s default back up program, is one of those not so perfect things.

My biggest problem with Time Machine is the inability to customize just when Time Machine backs up.  The only time management setting offered by Time Machine is on or off.  When it’s on it backs up everything on your Mac, every hour.  I find this to be a major nuisance as it seems my iMac is always backing itself up and it’s usually suffering some performance when doing so.  This becomes even more of an issue when I’ve been busy on my iMac over the previous hour because it leaves Time Machine with a large amount of work to do.

Thankfully, while listening to a recent podcast from the Mac Observer, I recently discovered a great freeware utility that allows the user to set a real schedule for just when Time Machine goes to work.

Time Machine Editor is a simple program that once installed gives you complete control over when your back ups occur.  You can set daily, weekly, or monthly back up and even specify the time that the back ups are done.

With Time Machine Editor I feel like I’ve gained a little bit more of the power of my iMac back.

You can learn more about this free application on the developer’s web site.

Storage.

If you don’t have it, you’re going to get caught holding the short end of the hard drive.  If your drive goes south, without backup storage and some type of backup strategy, you could be in a world of hurt.  Everyone here at Gear Diary knows what that means… We’ve had a couple of server issues over the past few years that have caused all of us some major pain.

Enter the Elite-AL Pro Qz2.  It’s a RAID drive system and backup device that will accommodate up to 8TB (yes… that’s 8 TERABYTES) of data in a single drive array. Let’s take a look and see how it does with both Windows and Mac systems.

The Elite-AL Pro Qz2 RAID array (right)

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I reviewed Diino last week and while I thought that it had potential, I couldn’t really recommend using it as a primary online backup solution. I was trying out two other services at the same time, so here’s Part II of the trilogy.

Memopal is a year-old start up based in Italy, providing online backup and storage services. They have two plans for consumers: a $49 plan with 150 GBs of combined space for backups and file storage, and a $99 plan with 250 GBs.

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I think that if I were to leave a legacy in the computer world, it would be this: always, always, always, always back up your data (with apologies to Winston Churchill whom I loosely paraphrased.)  you see, I have led a lifetime of losing data, which dates all the way back to my first computer, the Apple II+.  Most recently, for those of you who read our review of Spb Mobile Shell, boy did I go crazy over that one.  After an hour and a half of editing and saving, my computer chose to ignore the save command, dropping all of my edits.  So, boy do I wish I had the Seagate Replica PC Backup Appliance, which can provide backup support for one or multiple PC’s.  Keep reading for the full press release on this incredibly useful looking peripheral, which is due to be released in May.

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Over a year ago, whilst working feverishly on an overdue college paper, I spilled a large glass of water over my laptop. Cue panic attack as the MacBook Pro sizzled. I had a backup of that document on my Fujitsu tablet, but it was several days old, and so was the previous SuperDuper backup of the MacBook. Fortunately, the MacBook was fine after several hours by a heater (with the battery out, of course). I got round to looking at online backup services after that. I evaluated SugarSync (pricey), Diino (no Mac client) and settled on Mozy.

After the initial beta hiccups, Mozy’s been working fine on the MacBook, but for my new Mac Pro, I’ve decided to look at other, more fully featured services. I’ve been using Diino, Memopal and SpiderOak concurrently, and I’ll be reviewing them in alphabetical order – first up, Diino.

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If there’s one thing that ANYONE at Gear Diary can attest to, its the need for some kind of backup solution.The site has had at least 1 catastrophic failure, where a great deal of data was lost.  I personally have had my PC’s go south at least twice in 13 years where a backup either wasn’t available or was corrupted. 

Now, I’ve got multiple backups on my MyBook World Edition NAS as well as on a USB 2.0 2.5" hard drive…but neither of these are always the best solution. Sometimes, you need a bit more.

OWC recently announced a desktop RAID solution that holds anywhere from 2.0 to 8.0TB (yes, that’s EIGHT terabytes) of data in either RAID 0,1,5 or 10 arrays.  The nice thing about this particular solution is that it appears to be pretty much plug and play, allowing you to connect your PC to it with either FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0 or eSATA cables.

I’m in the process of arranging for a review unit to be sent, and we’ll be taking a closer look at this device to see if its something that anyone and everyone can use to help make their data more secure.  The complete press release can be found after the break.

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