Short and Long Term Backup Strategy

A person who relies on their laptop, pc, notebook etc. for many aspects of their life must have a solid data backup plan. As some of you might be able to attest from experience, regardless of how reliable your hardware is, IT WILL break sooner or later and most likely when you don’t expect it.

After experimenting with various backup solutions and strategies I have personally discovered that I needed two types of backups. 1) a real time synchronizing type of backup, and 2) long term no-so-real-time backup with some kind redundancy. Don’t worry here’s what I mean by each type.

1. Real Time Backup. A real time backup to me is the type of backup that is constantly monitoring my day to day computing activities keeping an eye on any data file changes. If I open up a Word document make some minor changes to it and close it, I want this Word file to be immediately backed up somewhere safe with the latest copy.
2. Long Term Backup. This backup would be considered more an archive than a backup. A good example for an archive would be your family pictures from so many years back as well as the latest ones, or you kids’ videos of their first walk. and or copies of various documents that you’d like to keep for reference. Long term backup also monitors you filing activities not in a constant fashion but at regular intervals. Then it determines if there are any new, deleted or changed files and folders and back them up accordingly. These types of backups are generally slower than the real time backup as they attempt to be as unobtrusive to your CPU and your bandwidth as possible in order not to slow you down. These backups are also generally less expensive than the Real Time solutions.

Use Case Scenario for Real Time Backup
As you go through the day, you edit, open, close, delete and create a variety of files and folders. These files are maintained in the equivalent of the “My Documents” library if you use a Windows based machine. This library is considered a dynamic library as it is never the same from one day to the next. For this type of backup I went through an evaluation process of the various cloud/online backup services such as Spideroak, Sugarsync, and Dropbox. I had 5 primary criteria during the evaluation:

1. Backup must occur in real time- All three products offered this functionality and all seem to have similar update speeds, which is truly gated by your internet speed.
2. It must allow file and folder synchronization to another machine. Again, all three offered this function, however, Dropbox uses a different approach, whereas you are limited to the specific “Dropbox” drive like space on your PC.
3. File backup must be encrypted prior to leaving my machine so it is stored encrypted on the vendors’ storage servers. Another term for this is “Zero Knowledge” backup. On this one, only Spideroak office the simplest most straightforward functionality. The other two may or may not officer it and if they did it is not evident and I did not notice it in their product detail.
4. It must allow flexible file and folder selection of what to backup. At the time I did my evaluation both Spideroak and Sugarsync offiered this function, and to me Spideroak was the more straightforward approach in their local application. Dropbox’s approach is to create a dedicated “Dropbox” space on your drive which you could use as a place to drop your files or folverders that you want backed up and synchronized.
5. Cost per gigabyte. At the time of my evaluation again all three were very close contenders when it came to price structure. Sugarsync offered a lower priced starting plan however their per/Gigabyte prices were very close.

As you can see from the above all three are good choices however Spideroak won me over primarily with their “Zero Knowledge” offering and secondly the file/folder selection flexibility, which to me was easier to implement and manage than Sugarsync.
I hope you find this brief analysis helpful as you make your decision. Feel free to post your comments or questions on this blog. I’d love to hear from you whether it is a question, an addition or a disagreement.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Backup Solution topic when I will cover “Long Term Backup” strategy.

Well, now that I'm happily using my handy dandy Spideroak application to encrypt and send my files to the Spideroak servers for safekeeping, I have another dilema or situation I need to tackle on that matter; and that is my second laptop which is my work laptop.

Here's my scenario or workflow.  I'm a Software Project Manager with an Health Information Technology company and with my line of work, I have weeks when I work from home and others when I'm traveling to client sites, sometime one week at a time and others, I'm several weeks away from my home base.  When I'm traveling I use my work Laptop and as you all know, we all have not just work files that we use regularly, but we also have several personal files and folders that we need access to.

My personal folders are generally held and maintained on my Lenovo X220T Unit.  But now, instead of lugging around a USB drive which I have to keep in sync with the Lenovo X220T personal folders I'm using my trusted Spideroak to synchronize them with a local folder on my "not so fun to use" work Dell machine.

You see, once you get the hang of the Spideroak application,which is not that difficult to do you will discover a tab a SYNC.  This feature allows you to select any file or folder that is backed up on any of your registered computers and synchronize it with your other registered computers.

All you have to do, is go to the SYNC tab, create a new Sync Job, identify and select the files or folders you want to synchronize, save and voila.  All done.

Result:  I have done some testing on the speed with which Spideroak sychronized files, by having both laptop up and running and making edits to several files and I have identified in a synch job.  Though it is not instantaneous, it is a process which completes within a few (a couple depending on file sizes off course) minutes when both units are running and connected.  However if your receiving machine is off, then the synchronization will obviously take place as soon as that unit is on and connected to the internet.

Again, my favorite thing about Spideroak is their "Zero Knowledge" technology, meaning I can feel that much better about backing up some of my personal files to the Cloud...

Next, I think I will do one more of my Spideroak  actual use experience before going back to the Lenovo X220T; probably talk about the infamous X220T Pen.

As always and in the meantime, I hope those who read my post do feel free to pose questions, comments, critiques...etc.  I plan on doing my best to reply to questions in  a timely manner.

We Are Moving

I have decided to use a dedicated domain for my blog.

If you are still interested in following the news about the Lenovo X220T Laptop/Tablet combo 

please go to:

http://gizmobeat.net/

I look forward  to seeing you there!

Now that I'm Set, How Do I Safeguard My Data

Well, I've got all of my software in, loaded my working data as well as my pictures, music..etc.  I work on this machine daily and no matter how reliable I've come to experience Lenovo's hardware, a hard drive will crash sooner or later and it is not easy to predict when.

Anyway, as you know, a good backup habit is very important if you rely on a computer for many things.  So here it goes.

First I have an off the shelf file backup software which I have automated to mirror my the files/folders to be backed up onto an external drive.

I used to have an Windows Home Server but the HP Server finally crashed and it was too much hassle to restore it as well as it did not support Windows 7 very well.  There apparently is a new version of Windows Home Server (version 2011), however I hear that Microsoft is sunseting it.  Besides, the 2011 version will require a 64 bit hardware, meaning I have to go out and spend a few hundred $$s to get it up and running,   Which also required regular maintenance and some experience with networking.  Instead I opted with "cloud" based backup.

My requirement for a cloud based backup was to have a service which supported "zero knowledge" type of cloud backup.  Just in case you are not familiar with "zero knowledge" backup it is simple a backup solution whereas the vendor or it employees cannot access your information even if they have access to your account.  The reason for that is that the files being backed up to the cloud are first encrypted on your PC prior to being sent over the internet to their vendor's servers for safekeeping.

After researching most of the major cloud based services, I settled with two vendors.  the first one is Spideroak.  They are a bit pricey but I sleep better knowing that my confidential files are both backed up as well as encrypted before they leave my PC.  However, they have a defined space you can use for storage, and I have many pictures and family videos that take up more that 100 GB of space.  On the flip side I like their backup application as it offers several features (I will try and write a separate post dedicated to Spideroak soon).

The second service I signed up with is Carbonite, which offers you unlimited  storage and is about half the cost of Spideroak.  Though, Carbonite does offer the "Zero Knowledge" feature it is a bit more complicated than Spideroak's (I will also dedicate a separate post later).

That is it on Backup for now.  I think next I will cover my experience with the actual performance of the Lenovo X220T from various perspectives (hard drive read/writes, boot-up, screen display under different environments..etc).  If not, I'll see what my brain has to offer :-)

Stay Tuned, your comments about your experience with the Lenovo X220T is always welcome.

First Impressions

This is my first Blogging experience.  So hopefully I can get some folks reading it and sharing their comments and thoughts on their experience with their Lenovo X220T Laptop/Tablet combo.  Before I go further, I love it so far.


I was in the market for a new laptop and my old Dell Lattitude D630 was begging for retirement. So after several considerations, including Mac OS alternative I decided on the Lenovo X220T model.

I've had great experience with the indestructible T60 Lenovo so I figured the X220T will most probably be just as good. And GOOD it was.

I went with the 64 bit Windows 7 Professional set up with an 8GB Ran and a 320GB Hard Drive. I also got the one with the outdoor screen as I like to work hanging out at coffee shops.

I've had the laptop for a few months now. I was going to do the review earlier or as soon as I had it up and running, but I thought I'd wait until I had it all set up and had all my needed software installed; I can then give a true performance review.

When I first got the unit, it booted pretty quickly, and I thought to myself, "yeah, wait until you load your software and it'll slow down". So far even after loading all of my software with several "startup" type ones I am still happy with the bootup speed on this machine. My old Dell D630 with XP sometimes took 10 minutes before the drive light slowed down. Now we are talking about 30 seconds. NICE!!!

Compared to the Dell the unit is a little lighter, and the feel is your typical Lenovo solid and sturdy one when you carry it around. However for some reason Lenovo decided to have the battery extend out a little in the back, giving it an odd form. I learned later that this was necessary in order to give us a decent battery live. The keyboard is very comfortable even after extended use, and I say exented use because I've been very happy with its battery life. Which so far have gotten me about 5+ hours of heavy duty use.

The unit is very quiet and does not seem to overheat, though when I'm home and working at my desk, I do use a Tragus Chill Pad just as a good habit to keep the unit cool whenever possible.

The screen display is crisp and even in mildly sunny outdoor condition it is still pretty good and the glare is barely noticeable. I'm glad I got the one with the outdoor screen.

I hope other folks will see this review and start commenting with their thought on the X220T. I'd love to hear what others are saying about it.