Dropbox - A Backup Solution

Dropbox as an off-site backup

There are now a number of cloud storage services available for free. Amongst them are Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive. I have used and had good experiences with several but today I'd like to talk about Dropbox and using it as an off-site backup.

Dropbox is a service that will store up to 2GB of your files on line for free. If you need more space you have to pay for it. The service allows you to synchronize files between difference PCs and to access them via a web browser. I’m going to look at how we can use Dropbox as an online or cloud backup service. Out of the box Dropbox does not store your files securely, it does transfer them securely using encryption but once on Dropboxe's servers they could be accessed, for example, by a Dropbox employee. 

 

I’ll look at adding encryption to the mix in another Blog.

So lets get started by downloading the Dropbox installer from https://www.dropbox.com

Click on “Download Dropbox” on the bottom right of the web page

 

  Once downloaded run the installer, accept the user account control warning and follow the prompts given by the installer.

Leave the radio button on its default “I don’t have a Dropbox account” and click next.

Fill in the details to complete the form

Click Next

Chose Typical

 

 

Unless you want to access Dropbox on your phone click Next.

Step through the tour, it’s a good introduction to Dropbox

 

That’s the installation completed. You now have a Dropbox folder on your PC. The default location for Windows 7 is C:\Users\<your-login-name>\Dropbox .

There is also a new icon in your system tray for Dropbox. Double clicking on the icon will open your Dropbox folder. Any files you put in this folder are copied to the Dropbox servers giving you a backup in the cloud.

 

You can access your Dropbox folder from any web browser anywhere.

Open your email client and look for mail from Dropbox. Open that email and click on Get Started in the email.

This will take you to the Dropbox web site where you need to enter your email address and password to login.

You can retake the Dropbox tour anytime, it's accessible from you Dropbox web page and well worth it.

In a future blog I'll look at encrypting Dropbox files using Cloudfogger.

rolfejames@rolfejames.co.uk

 

Follow @RolfeJJames

Windows 7 Backup

 Backup Files and Folders in Windows 7

Windows 7  backup and restore options can be found by going to Start, Control Panel, Backup and Restore . If that’s a bit too much like hard work you can just go to Start and in the Search Programs and Files window type in “Back” and select from the options Backup and Restore. This will open the window shown below.

On the center of the window in the Backup section select Change settings.

First we tell the program where to put the backup. I’m choosing my Western Digital My Passport USB hard disk here.

On the next window I select Let Me Chose. This will allow me not to make a System Image when I backup and allow me to chose which folders I want to add to the backup.

 

I'm going to chose to backup all my documents, those are in the folder called ENGINEERING\rolfe.james's libraries, 

and the folders called Data and Share

Click Next and before we save our settings Windows allows us to review them.

If you are happy with those choices click Save settings and exit

 

After saving our settings we are returned to the Backup and Restore window we started from. On here we select Backup now. Windows starts the backup and provides a helpful progress bar.

And that's it! Files and Folder backup with Windows 7 is simple and intuative.

There is also an option to schedule backups so it's hard not to do!

 

Email me: rolfejames@rolfejames.co.uk 

Follow @RolfeJJames

Windows 7 Built in Backup and System Image

Backing up is something we all know we should do but somehow we never quite get around to. With Windows 7 built-in backup there’s now no reason to put off backing up your data. Windows 7 comes not only with a simple and effective backup program but it also allows you to make a full image of your system. What’s the difference between backing up and imaging? Well put simply Windows 7 backup makes a copy of your Documents whilst Windows 7 System Image makes a complete copy of your hard drive. With the latter if something goes terribly wrong you can easily and relatively quickly put it all back as it once was. I said relatively… The advantage of Windows 7 Backup is that it is much faster. What I would recommend is that you image your system perhaps once every couple of months or just after installing some new software and that you backup your documents every day.

So how do we go about creating a System Image with Windows 7.

The backup and restore options can be found by going to Start, Control Panel, Backup and Restore . If that’s a bit too much like hard work you can just go to Start and in the Search Programs and Files window type in “Back” and select from the options Backup and Restore. This will open the window shown below.

To create a System image select Create a System Image from the top left of the window and in the next window choose where to save your image to.

In this example I am using an external hard drive, specifically a Western Digital My Passport USB 3 drive. The 1TB ones are now quite inexpensive and have tons of space. Should you want to you can create an image on a network drive or on DVD. But if you chose to make the image onto DVDs I suggest you make your self comfortable as it will take a while and a LOT of DVDs. In the next window you are shown what is going to be imaged and offered the option to include additional partitions. In this case I chose not to add the D partition to the image.

Click next and confirm your choices

And then start the backup

As the imaging process proceed Windows will show you its progress. Upon completion of the imaging process  you are asked if you want to create a System Repair disk. If you don’t already have one then make one now. You’ll need a DVD for this.

 Pop a DVD in and click Yes

Then click Create Disk

And that's it! Microsoft have made the process quite simple to follow.

Email me
Follow @RolfeJJames

Hard Drive SMART Technology

Get S.M.A.R.T.

It’s  New Years day, a time when traditionally we decide to change. A time when many take up some sort of exercise, a time to get fit. But what about your poor old hard drive? Is it fit? How can you tell?

Well one way is to get S.M.A.R.T! No not the bumbling T.V. secret agent, S.M.A.R.T not Smart! 

There’s a good introduction to Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology on Wikipedia but it’s enough to know it a technology whose goal was to predict hard drive failure. 

Accessing S.M.A.R.T. information from you hard disk can be done by using smartmontools which are available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other OSes from Sourceforge.

smartctl -a /dev/hda

After downloading and installing smartmontools running smartctl –h will give a full list of available commands. 

Two useful commands are:

smartctl -t long /dev/hda which will run a ‘long’ test on the drive and

smartctl -a /dev/hda which will show a large amount of information about the drive and indicate any errors.

CrystalDiskInfo

Smartmontools are great but it takes a little time to full grasp what they report. For those of us who like an easy life, and who does not! There is CrystalDiskInfo. It also provides a lot of information but it displays key information in a way that allows you to quickly ascertain the health of a disk. 

I favor the Portable Apps version as it does not need to be installed on a PC to run.

Follow @RolfeJJames