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What’s Your Mobile Backup Strategy?

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With news that Seagate is releasing what looks like a ridiculously slim USB hard drive (and our contest to win one of these Seagate GoFlex Slim drives) it got my gadget lust genes pumping and me salivating a little bit. Who doesn’t want something that small to use for a backup drive?

Coming back to earth (I am doing my taxes this week after all) and it made me question whether or not the portable HD I tote around with me is actually worth the toting, given the myriad of online backup options you can avail yourself of. But I follow the new rule of thumb and have important data backed up on both portable media and in the cloud, although the portable HD carries more data than I send up to the cloud.

So, as always I’m curious. What’s your mobile back up strategy? Portable media? The Cloud? A combination? Tell us in the comments and/or in the poll below.

And make sure you enter into the contest to pick up one of those pencil thin Seagate drives.

 

[polldaddy poll=4850382]

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. tivoboy

    04/05/2011 at 3:08 pm

    I don’t think there are very good cloud only solutions for things like photos, videos, and sometimes sensitive data. (get your mind out of the gutter, I mean company documents!) I always have a small external 500GB drive with me for pictures and such so it doesn’t fill up the internal as much and also for backup. Cloud solutions like dropbox, sugarsync, livemesh are great for backing up the docs and files which can occur very quickly even on a 3G connection.

    • Ashly

      04/06/2011 at 10:38 am

      The only way to think that online backup is a very safe and secure place to store your data is to assume they are secure. Than relying on a hard drive or ext. hd that can be swept away any minute when disaster occurs. One of the best options for me are; Dropbox mostly for sharing large files and I also use http://www.safecopybackup.com for online backup. They have saved tons of money and it’s a huge peace of mind for me.

      • Night On The Web

        04/06/2011 at 12:20 pm

        Actually the UI of safecopybackup is the same as Memopal … which is kind of strange … On the other hand with memopal you can have a “bigger” free accoutn :-)

      • tivoboy

        04/06/2011 at 1:53 pm

        Hope, is not a strategy.

  2. Rodfather

    04/05/2011 at 5:50 pm

    For the cloud, CrashPlan for offsite backup. It’s relatively inexpensive and I have over 100GB backed up there.
    Dropbox is synced between multiple computers for documents.

    For local/cloud backup, I have an external drive connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station acting as a Time Machine and network drive. I can access it anywhere with the help of setting a dynamic dns to my home IP.

    I also carry around a portable harddrive just in case, since the MB Air SSD is relatively small.

    I used to use PogoPlug, but it was horribly unreliable. I eventually went with the AEBS + USB External Drive solution explained above.

  3. Night On The Web

    04/05/2011 at 6:45 pm

    For ALL the data that i collect during a semester i use 2 cloud solution (so the backup is redundant :-) ): Memopal (i have a free 14 GB account) (if anyone is interested in trying that out here is the refferal link: https://apps.memopal.com/r/?VDZRa1JhXD0MN1di) and Sugarsync (a free 6.5 GB). Sugarsync is installed on both my x200t and my desktop-home computer, while Mempopal only on my desktop-home computer. I found out that on 1 university semester i usually collect 4 to 5 GB of data (among which audio recorded lessons, .ppt presentation, .pdf documents by teachers) so with this solution i can have on line 2 semester’s data plus a copy of those date on my table pc and my desktop. Actually the sugarsync accout doesn’t always fit these need so i am trying to send some invitation around (if you mind giving a hand here is the referral link: https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=eqbsw3or4tpt0).

    Currently i am thinking about getting a 2.5” USB external HDD to improve this backup system. I still don’t know which HDD to chosee between the 500GB version of the Lacie Rugged safe (https://www.lacie.com/it/products/product.htm?id=10489) or the Lenovo
    ThinkPad Secure Hard Drive – 500GB (https://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/itind/LenovoPortal/it_IT/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=57Y4400&current-category-id=2478535BAB3C417CA9D77F5867D31462&model-number=7449). I like the fingerprint reader of the former but also the buil-in usb cable of the latter. Any suggestion about it?

  4. Night On The Web

    04/05/2011 at 6:45 pm

    For ALL the data that i collect during a semester i use 2 cloud solution (so the backup is redundant :-) ): Memopal (i have a free 14 GB account) (if anyone is interested in trying that out here is the refferal link: https://apps.memopal.com/r/?VDZRa1JhXD0MN1di) and Sugarsync (a free 6.5 GB). Sugarsync is installed on both my x200t and my desktop-home computer, while Mempopal only on my desktop-home computer. I found out that on 1 university semester i usually collect 4 to 5 GB of data (among which audio recorded lessons, .ppt presentation, .pdf documents by teachers) so with this solution i can have on line 2 semester’s data plus a copy of those date on my table pc and my desktop. Actually the sugarsync accout doesn’t always fit these need so i am trying to send some invitation around (if you mind giving a hand here is the referral link: https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=eqbsw3or4tpt0).

    Currently i am thinking about getting a 2.5” USB external HDD to improve this backup system. I still don’t know which HDD to chosee between the 500GB version of the Lacie Rugged safe (https://www.lacie.com/it/products/product.htm?id=10489) or the Lenovo
    ThinkPad Secure Hard Drive – 500GB (https://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/itind/LenovoPortal/it_IT/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=57Y4400&current-category-id=2478535BAB3C417CA9D77F5867D31462&model-number=7449). I like the fingerprint reader of the former but also the buil-in usb cable of the latter. Any suggestion about it?

  5. Frank

    04/07/2011 at 5:11 pm

    I definitely prefer to use the cloud to backup my files – I use a combination of https://www.filesdirect.com and https://www.databackupexpress.com – great services and very reliable!

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