Saturday, March 12, 2011

Backblaze Back-up & Search this Blog

First,it turns out there is a Search on this blog! Look up in the upper left hand corner of the blog in the bar that goes along the top and you will see a Search Box. It works pretty well. You have to put the exact word in - for instance when I searched on "book report" (singular) it did not find the posts about our "book reports" (plural).

Second, tagging onto Amanda's post about computer crashes, I want to share a personal story of computer salvation in case it helps anyone else. To make a long story short - in trying to sync my calendar to a phone using a syncing program all of my appointments and events on my calendars were deleted!

Fortunately, I use an online computer backup service, Backblaze. I have been using it for almost a year but this was the first time I had ever had to go to it to recover files. Wow! Now I am a Backblaze Believer. It was easy, clear, worked extremely well! I was able to select just the file I needed to restore, but if I had needed to restore all my data - it was all right there.

The thing I like about Backblaze is it takes care of everything for you. You do not need to select which files or folders need to be backed up. So many of the other backup programs require you to select the files and folders that you wish to back up. This leaves you selecting the obvious, like in Amanda's case her photos, but leaving you at risk of losing the rest of the data scattered around in hidden corners of your computer's hard drive. Backblaze has a simple (3 clicks) setup - you don't even have to enter a credit card - and then it does all the work behind the scenes when your computer is idle. It does not slow down your computer at all.

I personally choose to backup online because of fear of theft. If someone breaks in and steals a computer - they will probably take an external hard drive too if they find it. However, that said, I am planning to get an external drive to use for backups as well. I would rather have duplicate systems. Loosing just my calendars was scary enough for me.

Now, here is a disclaimer! I am jazzed enough about Backblaze from this experience that I signed up to be an affiliate - which means if you click on the Backblaze link to sign up and try it out . . . and you eventually decide to become a paid subscriber ($5 per month or $50/year) . . . I get some kudos and a very small amount of credit. That is NOT why I am writing this post. You don't need to use Backblaze! Use a different program or system - but just do backup your system at least weekly!

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