Computer crash!

Not mine, it was that of the minister of our church. On Saturday morning. It got me thinking about the issue of backups. One of the challenges is the steps one must take to complete a backup. The more user intervention, the less likely to occur. To address the issue at St. Stephen's, we purchased a small server to maintain our files on a RAID drive. This unit, a Dlink DNS-323 is connected to our wireless router, and holds shared files of all our users. However, data security extends far beyond simply consciously saving file to a network drive, so a number of other steps were added. As I have an existing account with a web hosting company, web based backup space was readily available, but needed to be accessed. In addition, we needed easy ways to maintain files. Here are some of the utilities I found to make the task easier.

• GFI Backup Home edition - a great utility from GFI Software which allows easy backup of files to a number of destinations, including USB sticks, DVD, LAN Drives of FTP sites on the 'net.
• Fling - by NCH Software of Australia, appears as one or more folders on your desktop, or anywhere else you care to place it, and allows you to drop files into the folder, and they are automagically uploaded to an FTP site. Originally created for easy maintenance of websites, it's a really useful tool for ensuring your most important files are kept safe in an off site location. We also looked at a similar product, Tango Dropbox, but found it less useful.
• Dropbox - a handy file store & file sharing tool. Like Fling, Dropbox appears as a folder in your documents folder. Placing a file in the dropbox moves it to their servers. You can invite other dropbox users to share folders within your Dropbox, and any changes anyone makes are immediately shared with the rest of the group. You can also place files in a Public folder, where anyone can access a specific file if you send a link to it. We have found Dropbox a great tool for collaborative work.
• OpenDrive - this was another program that showed promise, but I was unable to get it to work on my computer. It is similar to Dropbox in concept -- a network drive appears in the 'My Computer' folder and is accessible as is any other drive on your computer.
• Mozy - a popular file back-up option was not assessed due to its cost.

We are now backing up the files at the church on a daily basis. Now the task is getting folk who are used to placing everything in the documents folder on the c: drive to start using other options, so other users can share the files!