Must Have Application for Thumb Drives
It’s a sign of the time, you can buy a thumb drive almost anywhere. I have even seen them in Gas Stations in the Omaha area.
There are many reasons to use these drives: size, portability convenience, and storage space, all come to mind quickly. A lot of my external users do not even take their laptops to meetings anymore because they can keep all their presentations and such on a thumb drive and just plug into any machines.
On the other side of the coin, there are some inherent risks to the transportation of these devices. You may forget them on site, lose them while getting something from your pocket, so on and so forth. No matter the reason, if you lose your drive, all of that data is now available to the person that finds it.
Here are some examples of the type of data that can be lost by anyone:
Firm ‘broke rules’ over data loss
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has blamed a private contractor for losing the details of thousands of criminals, held on a computer memory stick.
Tax website shut down as memory stick with secret personal data of 12million is found in a pub car park
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people’s private details.
The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.
Two examples may not seem like a large amount, but if you look at the amount of data that was lost in these two examples you will realize how much data is at stake.
With that being said, I have found a free application that will help with this. Rohos Mini Drive Encryption. This app has a very small footprint and once your drive is setup, you don’t have to install software on any other computer to access that encrypted file.
According to the developers website they list the features as:
- Creates a virtual encrypted partition volume (disk) within a USB flash drive free space
- Automatically detects your USB stick config and creates encrypted partition
- Program does not require installation to work with encrypted partiton on a guest computer. You can start it right from USB drive
- Encrypted partition is protected by password
- Encryption is automatic and on-the-fly
- Encryption algorithm: AES 256 bit key length. NIST approved.
- Rohos Disk Browser to open encrypted partition without having Admin rights
- Virtual Keyboard — to protect your encrypted disk password from a key logger
- Autorun Folder. Saved program’s/file’s shortcut will automatically start/open up upon disk connection
- The limit of encrypted partition size is 2 GB
I find the software very easy to use and intuitive. In no time, I had carved 500 megs on one of my drives and was moving files over to the encrypted portion. To try out the functionality I handed the disk to my co-worker and watched as they put it in and sure enough none of the data showed. Just an executable. When run, the password challenge screen comes up. I really do like the idea of a virtual keyboard, particularly if you are on a computer that you do not know. Better safe then sorry in this world. Once the correct password is entered and accepted an explorer window is opened and all your files are accessible. It did take a few moments for me to see how to add new files to the encrypted volume. Just so you know, in the explorer window you can right click and import file.
As I said before, in this world, encrypt everything. I highly recommend this program to anyone with a thumb drive.
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Online Backup
A few days ago, I discussed a backup tool named Cobian and I promised to look into online space for offsite storage.
While looking around a I found quite a few, but focused on three. I will go over some of my initial impressions, and direct links to the site (so the FTC doesn’t chase me down for getting something for giving my opinion).
The three I will be talking about are iDrive.com, Mozy.com, and Humyo.com. Now the first thing that’s important to everyone is, how much space do I get. iDrive and Mozy both have 2 gigs for free, but this link (I promise I get nothing) will get you a 250 MB upgrade on Mozy. Humyo might as well be called Humongous giving you a whopping 10 GB online storage. Now this is all FREE.
Of course, if you find you are running out of space, you can pay for upgrades. For $4.95 a month you get expand to 150 GB on iDrive, Mozy gets to be a bit more expensive, using the pay as you go model at $3.95 a month per 500 MB. My opinion on that is if you are paying that, pay for hosting. In the odd case that you will need more then 10 GB for backing up your most critical data on Humyo it will run you $6.99 a month to get 100 GB.
So besides space, I am sure there are probably other things to consider. Let me think…
How do I get my data from my computer to my storage place. Well all three have a client that you can install on your computer. Though Humyo requires you have a paid account to use the client. It does, however, have a web console you can drag and drop into a java upload client.
The clients are nice and small, quick easy downloads, so I won’t get into that. Some of the things that I noticed on the client.
For the Mozy client, it automatically gives you a recommended backup set, including Thunderbird data. Since I use Thunderbird, that is handy to have. It also gives you two options of data encryption. If you push have VoIP phones, or bandwidth issues in general, you can throttle the application as well as schedule your backups for slow network times.
iDrives’ client is not as fully featured (at least not to the naked eye). The initial backup set is your documents and settings folder. With some digging around you can setup bandwidth throttling also. But it does have a synch option (quick delete if you erase a folder and want it pulled out of your backup) and continuous backup. Though I am not sure how often it checks.
Since you have to have a paid account for the Humyo client, I will not review it.
Ok. We have now backed up all the data and sure enough, we have to reformat or our machine, boooo. Or we just got a new computer and we want to get our documents back, yeah!
How do we get it back. Of course for both iDrive and Mozy you can use the client and restore. But… I want more. It’s free, I want it all.
For Mozy you have a two options: You can use a virtual drive (created when the client is installed) and drag and drop or pay for a DVD to be created and FedEx to deliver the disk.
With iDrive, you can go to the site and login. Going into the restore area you can use a Java applet to download your files. Or you can get a second download to create a virtual drive and go through your Windows Explorer.
Well Folks. I hope that helps a bit. Remember, backups are important…Before the system crashes.
Categories: Internet Tags: age, application, are, as, backup, backup set, backup tool, backups, bandwidth issues, can, Cobian, comp, computer, critical data, disk, Download, downloads, Find, FREE, Ftc, initial impressions, mozy, odd case, quick, Review, running out of space, space, storage, storage place, system, the, thunderbird, voip phones, Web, WINDOWS, you
Cobian Backup Utility
A few posts ago I made a tongue in cheek comment to backing up. It did get me thinking a little bit about good FREE, and you will notice I like free, backup utilities that offered a good variety of backup options (location, spanning, archiving, and so on).
I came across Cobian. This utility has everything I believe the standard user will need. It can back up to network, FTP or disc. The FTP is a great function I think as it keeps your data stored offsite. The one drawback to that option is that you have to have FTP server to upload to, which can cost some money, though I will look for free data storage.
As I played with the application it had a lot of features I would not have expected, including being able to schedule full or incremental updates. It will even send you an email following the backup so that you can set it and for get it.
Setting up a scheduled run is easy as pie. In the main interface you will create a new schedule and then select the tasks. In the options of the task you can make selections including volume shadow copy, that is a great option so that system files will back up and you will not get the in use error.
You will be able to select the location of the files to back up: all drives, just a specific folder, even exclusions of files or folder (do you really need to backup your windows directory when you truly just want personal stuff backed up?). You can even have the files archived in either 7zip or winzip, or just backed up without compression. I would recommend using the compression since it does save space on disc or FTP upload. The one benefit to not doing that is you don’t have to open a spanned archive (over multiple disc) or download the full archive to get one single file.
Please try it out. Hopefully soon I will find out more about about free, reputable online storage.
Direct Download:
Cobian Backup (9.8 MiB, 125 hits)
Categories: SW Tags: 7zip, backup, backup options, backup utilities, backup utility, benefit, Cobian, Download, easy as pie, FREE, free data storage, FTP, ftp upload, incremental updates, shadow copy, single file, storage, tongue in cheek, windows directory, winzip

