Zac Garrett

For the last five or so years I have thought of Microsoft as being the source of all things evil. It all started around the same time Windows XP was released and it was exploited so quickly with many different virii (plural of virus, spelling from my tenth grade biology teacher). When it was nearly impossible to run Windows without being infected by some sort of virus a geek tends to get a bad taste in their mouth. Continue Reading »

It had been six months since I changed the design of the site and I had the urge to update it. The design is based off the old one, but I changed quite a few things. Besides the obvious color change I’ve added some rounded corners. I found a neat little script to do most of the work for me called Spiffy Corners. I had to tweak the code a bit to get it working properly with Serendipity, but it seems to be working on all browsers.

I do not consider myself a web designer, so any and all input is welcome.

After many years of using Linux I bought a MacBook Pro approximately six months ago. After my inital shock of having a new toy reality started to kick in and I wrote about my journey for picking a new laptop. At this point I have used the computer well more than enough to really compare it to my old friend Linux. Continue Reading »

When you live in a digital world and your entire life is saved on a hard drive it would be a horrible thing if that drive were to die. For that reason everyone needs to back up their data on a regular basis. For most people this is where the problem lies, how do you go about backing all of your data up? <!--more-->

The first step in backing up your data is to verify that system restore is enabled if you are running Windows XP. This does not backup your personal data nor save you from a hard drive failure, It does help with driver issues that I have come across. This is not really a backup solution, more of a simple way to save yourself some time in the future when working on your computer.

Next we need to take a look at the different backup solutions out there. The main solutions in my eyes for home users; external hard drive, network attached storage (NAS), and off site storage.

The simplest and probably the cheapest way to backup your data is just to buy a large external USB or firewire hard drive. This will allow you to manually save files to your external drive for future use.

Another solution that is adopted from the businesses is network attached storage or NAS for short. Simply put, this is an external hard drive that uses network interface rather than USB or firewire. If you have multiple computers this is a more ideal solutions as you can use a single drive to easily backup multiple computers.

With a NAS you can spend almost the same amount as a normal external hard drive and have it function very similarly. The other option is to spend quite a bit more and get something truly wonderful, such as a raid array. This will take your data and spread it between multiple hard drives so that if one fails the data is not lost. When a drive dies all you need to do is replace it and the system will automatically recover the data.

The final option is to use a service to store the data on someone else’s servers. This will allow you to store all of your data you want backed up on their server for a minimal fee. I will point to two services, Mozy and Amazon S3. Mozy is made for backing up your files and is all setup to do just that. Amazon S3 is just a pure file server that you could manually setup to backup your files. The only reason I point out Amazon S3 is that it is quite a bit cheaper than going with Mozy, just not nearly as user friendly for backups.

There is no valid reason not to backup your data, accept if you do not mind if you lose everything. Backing up is one of the most common things people forget about doing until it is too late. Save yourself the hassle in the future and backup today.