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Update: As noted in the comments, the site is now down for most people.
[Thanks, Tim]
Posts with tag BackUp
P.S. Things are loading slowly at the moment as the service comes up.
Update: As noted in the comments, the site is now down for most people.
[Thanks, Tim]
Afraid of Losing Job, Florida Woman Deletes Office Files Worth $2.5 Million
People can get awfully paranoid when it comes to their jobs. Some people can't help but think that everyone is out to get them, which seems to be the case for Marie Cooley of Jacksonville, Florida. Cooley is currently in jail after confessing to deleting files worth an estimated $2.5 million at her former employer, all because she thought she was about to get fired. As it turns out, she wasn't getting the boot, but we're not entirely sure she's the one with the most questionable judgment in this story.
It turns out that Cooley saw an ad in the classifieds for a job that sounded a lot like hers posted by her current employer, Steven E. Hutchins Architects, also in Jacksonville. She got angry, went in to work, and deleted all the company's work from its servers. She cleaned out seven years' worth of designs and drawings, designs the owner of the company estimated were worth $2.5 million. Cooley confessed to what is a second degree felony, potentially punishable by a five-year sentence.
She obviously wasn't quite right in the head when doing this, but we're inclined to think that the owner of the business isn't all there either. Despite estimating the worth of the company's files at $2.5 million, the architecture firm had no backup systems in place. That's a recipe for disaster regardless of the sanity of your employees. Even the local Sheriff's office knows better than that, issuing the following statement:
The lesson to be learned here is that you can't depend on having just one set of records or files and having your employees have access to them. You've got to have some kind of backup.Thankfully the files were able to be recovered, but backups of important files are not something you should take lightly. These days, backups are easy to implement, regardless of what kind of computing you do. On the Mac, OSX 10.5 Leopard includes the Time Machine functionality which, when stored on an external USB drive, makes backing up easy. On Windows you can copy your important stuff to an external drive yourself or invest in a Windows Home Server box to automatically and securely back up your stuff daily.
Oh, and that job posting that sent Cooley off? Turns out it was for another company run by the boss's wife. Go figure.
From First Coast News
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Flavored Mini Portable USB Drives Provide Tasty Back-up Options
With flavors like marshmallow, kiwi, bubblegum, black cherry and espresso the new line of Fabrik SimpleTech's Signature Mini Drives are ready to be filled up even as they make you salivate. The fashion-forward drives were designed by powerhouse Italian designer Pininfarina (of Ferrari fame) and sport 120, 160, 250 and 320 gigabytes of storage space in a small and stylish form factor.
But the real bonus that comes with these drives is the Fabrik Ultimate Backup, which once activated automatically and incrementally backs up your hard drive either locally or externally via a secure server farm for free (up to 2 gigabytes free or $5 per month for unlimited storage).
The drives will be available next month and range from $119.99 (120 gigabytes) to $229.99 (320 gigabytes).
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NRG Dock Juices Up Gadgets When the Power Is Out
Three years ago Jay LeBoff got snowed in and lost power for four days. During that time, LeBoff was forced to rely on a cell phone as his only way of contacting the outside world for emergency purposes. But without power to recharge the phone, he would have been up a certain creek without a paddle if the battery gave out.
The experience, and a little bit of environmentally-friendly thinking, inspired LeBoff to design the NRG Dock, an emergency power source in three different styles, two of which are taking advantage of the renewed interest in solar power.
The NRG Dock Home comes in two separate parts, a large solar panel that charges a massive 12-volt battery capable of powering a laptop, and the NRG Dock itself, which has a variety of power adapters for phones, media players and other electronics, as well as a rechargeable flashlight.
The Apartment model has the same dock, but instead features a smaller, removable solar panel mounted on top. The Apartment model doesn't generate enough juice to power a laptop, though, and carries a smaller battery, but the lesser size means the solar panel can be mounted on a wider variety of surfaces, including the inside of the window.
The basic Designer dock has the same smaller battery as the Apartment model, but drops the solar panel in favor of a standard wall plug and functions purely as an emergency backup power source.
Currently the NRG Dock is in the prototype stage, but the company hopes to hit a target price of $800 for the Home model, $500 for the Apartment, and $350 for the Designer. The Home and Apartment models will also qualify for a 30 percent tax break from the federal government and may qualify for additional tax breaks in certain states.
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Iraqi Students Backing Up Passports Online
Losing data without a backup is a painful scenario, but some people have seriously difficult backup scenarios. Case in point: Students in Iraq are using the Internet to back up even more documents: their passports. It seems that there is a disturbing trend where insurgents kidnap students and take -- or destroy -- their passports along with other official Iraqi documentation. With the number of security checkpoints in the country today, being without that documentation makes a dangerous place potentially deadly.
As a result, Iraqi students have been using online sites like Mobixie to upload photos of their personal documentation for later retrieval should they need some sort of proof of identity on the run. Outside of Iraqi documentation, Mobixie's most popular content is pictures of women in various states of undress and pictures of German autos.
From textually.org
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Air Conditioners and Data Loss
In the next month or so, when the stinky sweat of summer sets in, don't be so quick to turn down the thermostat. According to Ben Carmichel of ESS Data Recovery, that AC unit may be killing your computer's hard drive. It has nothing to do with temperature or humidity, but rather the power spikes and brownouts that the average conditioner creates as it clicks on and off. These surges wreak havoc on the motors inside of your hard drives, causing them to fail sooner than they would otherwise and possibly corrupting or losing your data.
Backing up your data is the best protection, of course. You should also think about adding a small Uninterruptible Power Supply, which is a surge protector with a built-in battery that mellows out those power surges and brownouts. UPS maker APC has online tools that will help you find the right one for your system and ensure you hours of worry-free computing in your meat locker of a home.
From Engadget
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