Computer Corner

July 2010
Files in the Sky

You all know how much I stress making regular backups. I hope by now you are even quoting me: “It’s not a question of if you will need your backups, but only a question of when you will need them.”

With the price of external hard drives in free fall (based on cost-per-megabyte), storing data online instead of locally could seem inconvenient at best and a threat to your data security at worst. But online-storage sites, both paid and free, offer two advantages over attached external hard drives: safe and secure offsite backups and anytime-anywhere file sharing. Images and documents stored online are accessible 24/7 (to anyone with the right password) anywhere there's an Internet connection. Online storage is, in fact, more secure than the external hard drives sitting next to your PC. Ever knocked a running external hard drive over? Yikes… instantly unreadable. And unless you carefully lock these drives away, anyone could simply walk off with all your files. Online storage sites typically use industry-standard backup systems for their storage and employ multiple levels of security including password protection, data encryption on their servers, and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption between your PC and the cloud.

Most online-storage services offer automated backups, which run unobtrusively in the background and have little or no effect on PC performance. The better services now connect to mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, Blackberry and Android devices — an excellent way to quickly back up and share photos and other mobile documents.

The drawbacks to online storage? Well you must have an active Internet connection, and the cost of data storage may be higher than for the personal terabyte drives commonly available today. Free online storage ranges from about 8 GB to 25 GB. Paid storage is based on a monthly subscription fee, and storage capacities are potentially unlimited. Also, file-transfer speed between your PC and online storage is much slower than to a local drive, especially for large files.

It's also possible that an online file storage service could go out of business, locking you out of your storage vault. But the chances of that happening, compared to odds that your local backup drive will fail, are miniscule. In any case, the golden rule of backup still applies: never store your important files in just one place. If you cancel your fee-based storage account, most storage vendors' terms of service give them the right to delete your data. Check that any service you use has a one-month grace period after a cancellation, giving you time to remove your data.

Microsoft's online storage complements Office
Microsoft may be late to the cloud-computing game, but it has the most integrated suite of online apps, all collected under its Windows Live umbrella. (Google was way ahead of Microsoft with its online apps, but its suite has the typically spartan Google interface.)

SkyDrive is the online-storage component of Windows Live, and every member gets 25GB of free space. That's considerably more than competing online-storage sites offer. Everything you create with Windows Live apps (e-mail, photos, Word and Excel documents, calendaring data, and such) gets stored there. Windows Live SkyDrive's simple interface provides file storage, collaboration, and synchronization.
Where some online-storage services, such as Mozy, focus on automated backups, SkyDrive is rather a place in the Internet cloud to store working files, share files with friends and co-workers, and keep important documents synchronized on your various computing devices.

Collaboration is one of SkyDrive's potential strengths. Invited participants can read, edit, and comment on documents such as spreadsheets and presentations in real time, using the free online Office Live applications. I use a local program called SDExplorer (SkyDrive Explorer which completely integrates my SkyDrive into Windows File Explorer. You can use your SkyDrive just like any other folder on your computer. The Pro version supports mounting SkyDrive folders as network devices, complete with drive letter assignment. You can compare the Pro and Free versions here.


SkyDrive will support file synchronization between PCs as part of the new Windows Essentials. As with most online-storage services, you'll have to download a small app onto each machine to sync your files with other computers.

Drop files into a box and share them instantly

Dropbox.com gives away 2GB of storage for free, but the versatility of the site will likely lure you into spending the $9.95-a-month to subscribe to 50GB of space.

Dropbox's talents include file synching, sharing, and backup plus access to your documents via an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. You download a small app onto each of the PCs you are using; a Dropbox folder then appears on each desktop. Drag one file or a bunch of files to the Dropbox folder, where they're automatically stored in your online Dropbox vault. (The files are copied to online storage, not moved, so you always have a local copy of your files.)

Dropbox synchronizes files on every PC on which you've set up a Dropbox account. Make a change in a presentation on your desktop, and it will be automatically updated on your notebook. You always have the latest copy in all locations. Previous versions of documents are kept for 30 days by Dropbox, giving you fail-safe undos. You can even recover deleted files. Within the Dropbox folder is a Public folder, and it works exactly as its name implies: you can share files placed in the Public folder with anyone. Each document can have its own Internet link. (You cannot, however, link to specific folders in the Public area.) For true collaborations, you can create a shared folder allowing several people to work together on a set of files. Using an application that supports simultaneous editing, they can see each other's changes instantly. This is similar to Google Docs

Collaborate on documents in the cloud

Box.net is similar to Dropbox but has stronger collaboration tools. The free account gives you 1GB of storage, and no file can be over 25MB. You can pay $9.95 a month for 10GB of storage; business plans offer more features and, in many cases, unlimited storage. Maximum file size is 2GB. Like Dropbox, Box.net lets you share files with anyone and almost any device that can read the files. You also can view previous versions of documents. Its Collaboration Folders mirror information across any number of Box.net accounts, so the changes you make to a folder's contents are instantly visible to your collaborators and vice-versa.

Box.net subscribers can conduct group meetings in live time with a discussions thread. A workflow table links to documents and helps group members stay organized as they approve, review, or update files. Box.net's strong collaboration tools include update summaries that help keep projects on track. One of Box.net's more-unusual features is its Profile folder, where you can share your full LinkedIn profile with others.

Make online and local backups simultaneously

Owned by multi national storage facilitator EMC, Mozy focuses primarily on backing up your data. And it does this task well. The service comes in two flavors: MozyHome for individuals and MozyPro for businesses. Individuals can sign onto the free service and get 2GB of space or pay $4.95 per month for unlimited storage. Mozy's strength lies in its flexible controls (see Figure 4), which let you set how and when it archives your data.

By default, the customizable software performs automatic backups in the background or at preset times — all with little effect on your PC's performance. Mozy 2.0 also lets you throttle up faster backups at the cost of some system performance. But the best feature in Mozy is its ability to simultaneously back up data to its servers to and a local external hard drive attached to your PC.
Mozy is designed to back up and restore your entire hard drive, but you can also cherry-pick selected files and folders to copy to the cloud.

Unlike SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Box.net, Mozy users cannot share files. Nor does it offer an easy way to view uploaded content. To do so, you must start a restore session, download the files you need, and then view them. You then restore files either through the Mozy desktop software or via the Mozy online portal. The latter choice is a bit of a kludge: for each selected file, it e-mails you a link to a download page.

Okay, that’s my overview of online backup and file sharing options. Now here are some cool links for you:
GREENPRINT promises to save you about $100 a year on paper and ink. It works to eliminate unnecessary graphics and blank pages that would otherwise run through your printer. Compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7 and a free download at http://www.printgreener.com/

PDF OCR converts scanned PDF files into text files, and uses its built-in text editor to edit the scanned text without the aid of MS Word. It recommends 256MB RAM and Pentium 4 or higher on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 2000, 2003, or ME. Download free at http://www.pdfocr.net/

PHOTO EDITOR FREE at http://www.photoeditorfree.com/ is an online Web photo editor provides a lot of professionally designed templates, borders, and materials and of course the big advantage is that you can access it from anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Oh, one last thing! Are you using Windows 7? Have you ever messed up a file by editing it or deleting content and then saving it over a previous version? Well, did you know that you can go back to an earlier version of almost any file on your computer? Windows simply grabs the earlier copy from a Backup or System Restore Point. Just right-click on the file in Windows File Explorer and chose “Restore Previous Versions” and then select the earlier version you want.
Do take the time to let me know if this column is useful to you, and also, please keep sending me your suggestions for column topics, along with your own tips or cool downloads, so I can share them with the Sangat. Just email them to me at guruka@sikhnet.com

Thanks!  - Guruka Singh