How to Back Up Your iOS Device with iCloud
Posted 11/10/2011 at 7:57am | by Cory Bohon
What's that? You don't know what to do with all of those gigabytes that Apple gives you? Sure, it's only 5GB of free space (Although who are we kidding? We go nuts over 2GB!) But the iCloud back up service makes it so that you don’t have to connect your device to iTunes in order to keep things synced. We’ll show you how easy it can be to live cord-free with iOS 5.
After signing into your iCloud account, navigate to System Preferences > iCloud > Storage & Backup. Once there, locate the iCloud Backup switch and move it from OFF to ON.
You’ll get a dialog that lets you know your iPad will no longer back up to your computer automatically when you sync your music, videos, etc. Select the OK button to have your iPad turn on iCloud Backup.
iCloud Backup will automatically back up your camera roll, accounts, documents, and settings when the iPad is plugged in, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi. To create your first backup, select the “Back Up Now” button. This process may take a while depending on the amount of storage you have used on your device.
iCloud will backup the following:
- Purchased music, apps, and books- Photos and video in the camera roll
- Device settings
- App data
- Home screen and app organization
- SMS and MMS messages
- Ringtones
You can purchase additional storage for the following upgrade prices:
- 10 GBs for $20.00 / year
- 20 GBs for $40.00 / year
- 50 GBs for $100.00 / year
Follow this article’s author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
How to Back Up Your iOS Device with iCloud | Mac|Life
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Best, Most Affordable Alternatives to Mozy for Unlimited Backups [Online Backup]
The Best, Most Affordable Alternatives to Mozy for Unlimited Backups
It's not that Mozy hasn't been a great cloud-based backup service, especially for beginners. But the sudden price jump is catching many off-guard, especially users of the unlimited plan. Here's where else you can look if you've got a good bit of data to back up.
Image via The Planet.
Let's run through the options that our readers have commented on, emailed about, or have otherwise come to our attention. We'll also share the costs for a few different levels of backup, and detail any bandwidth restrictions. As Adam discovered in his look at his Mozy account, the computer he was backing up the least was using 226 GB, so it's good to think beyond just what you've got right now on a single hard drive.
BackBlaze
Looking at all the options, and listening to our readers, BackBlaze seems the most likely to satisfy Mozy users experiencing sticker shock. Their pricing is similar, and they're remarkably open about how their business works and what you're getting.It's $5 per month for unlimited backup for one computer, or you can buy a year's worth of backup for $50. Their software for Windows and Mac automatically backs up the stuff you'd need if your computer ever went kaput, leaving out the OS, application, and cache/temp files. There are no bandwidth throttles or other caps, and they've been providing this backup since 2007.
BackBlaze's CEO, Gleb Budman, told us that they can keep their unlimited backup plans rolling because of an "incredibly efficient cloud storage system." BackBlaze maintains a data center where they also back up business accounts, and they've open-sourced their "Storage Pods" for other businesses to capitalize on. In other words, home backup seems like something like a "loss leader" to garner interest in BackBlaze's other services—except they might not actually lose on $5 per month.
Carbonite
Carbonite has long served as Mozy's most direct competition, offering a similar unlimited backup service and covering much of the same ground. They don't offer a 2 GB free plan, though, which might have made them a less familiar name among enthusiasts of all things free (ahem).A Carbonite representative told us that the service "will continue to provide consumers with unlimted backup for a flat fee because doing so keeps things very simple for our customers."
Their basic pricing model, for Windows and Mac systems.
- 1 year - $54.95 (per computer) (about $4.58/month)
- 2 years - $99.95 (per computer) (about $4.16/month)
- 3 years - $129.95 (per computer) (about $3.61/month)
Their bandwidth capping seems pretty fair for the average home user, but in case you've got a whole lot of file-swapping going on, here's their rules:
- The first 35GB of data can achieve upload speeds of up to 2 mbps (megabits per second).
- Between 35GB - 200GB of data can have the upload speeds reach up to 512 kbps (kilobits per second).
- 200GB or more of data can be uploaded at up to 100 kbps (kilobits per second).
CrashPlan
Got a friend with loads of extra storage space to spare? Have another always-on computer you'd like to back up to? CrashPlan backs up to those locations for free, and also offers a fairly cheap unlimited backup plan.CrashPlan has a 10 GB plan for $24.99 per year, but that's more like a big Dropbox than actual backup. Their system-friendly plans:
- CrashPlan+ Unlimited: $49.99/YR (about $4.17 per month).
- CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited: $119.99/YR for 2-10 computers (about $9.99 per month).
CrashPlan is also courting Mozy switchers directly: This link, pitched on their Twitter account and elsewhere, gets you 15 percent off your purchases.
Other Suggestions
Beyond those three fairly direct competitors, we've heard from fans of other services that seem worth checking out.
• LiveDrive has 25 percent off for Mozy users, and offers pretty good pricing for unlimited backup: $6.95 per month or $66.53 per year for a standard backup package, or $16.95 per month or $170.53 per year for a package that includes "briefcase" access to your files from anywhere, including virtual drive mounting. Both packages have pay-ahead discounts.
• Mark Finzel wrote in to recommend TrendMicro's SafeSync:
It seems that it's so new there aren't a ton of reviews or information out there, but as I said it seems very solid. I haven't had any issues with it and it's now successfully backed up and synced about 80GB on 2 computers in my home.
1. Price & no limits - $59.99/yr for unlimited online storage and unlimited computers
2. Storage format / remote drive - it gives you a drive mapped to your computer that you can see your files. They're stored as-is so you can find individual files easily (one thing I don't like about other backup solutions like CrashPlan is it's stored in a proprietary format)
3. You can control bandwidth used and pause syncing when needed. Also, no bandwidth throttling at least as far as I can tell (I've transferred about 80GB so far)• JungleDisk, a backup service tied to Amazon's per-GB S3 cloud storage service, is always an option. JungleDisk charges $3 per month and $0.15 per GB after the first 5 GB, so the price scales with your needs. If you were Adam Pash and ended up using 226 GB at Mozy, you'd be paying about $36 per month, though—so it's really for those who can and do keep a reign on what they really need backed up.
• Backup obsessive (and long-time Lifehacker confidante) How-To Geek points out that those using DreamHost as their web site host can back up 50 GB of personal data on their backup servers, with some caveats. Handy!
• Reader Scott, a.k.a. Storage Monkey, has a pointed, detailed look at the Mozy alternatives. He favors CrashPlan+, in part because it offers Linux clients (and even Solaris clients), but also the "back up to a friend's house" backup-backup plan.
If you're a Mozy customer who can't swing the new costs, where have you turned for unlimited or large-sized, off-site backup? Tell us about your favorites in the comments.Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.
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Thursday, December 2, 2010
How To Backup and Move VirtualBox Machines
Need to move a virtual machine, only to find that copying and pasting doesn’t work? Perhaps you just want to know what to backup? Take a look at this quick guide on the process to get a better understanding of VirtualBox
First things first: be sure that your virtual machine is shut down and powered off. Next, make sure you get rid of any snapshots you have. There isn’t a fool-proof and safe way to do this without getting rid of them, unfortunately. Select your virtual machine and click on the “Snapshots” tab.
Select your snapshot and click the delete button. Be prepared to wait a while as VirtualBox merges differences with your machine’s current state. The machine’s state won’t actually change, though, so don’t worry. Now that the prep stuff is out of the way, we can start the moving process.
Once that’s done, go to File > Virtual Media Manager. You’ll see a list of media that you’ve used or have attached to your machines.
Select which virtual machine you want to move, then click on the “Release” icon above. In my case, I’ll be moving W7.vdi from my home directory to another hard drive.
Once you have it released, close VirtualBox go to its default settings directory, /home/user/.VirtualBox/
You can copy your .vdi file from inside the HardDisks directory if you want to just back it up, or you can move it. Be patient, as this can take a while depending on your configuration.
Meanwhile, let’s edit the VirtualBox.xml file to our liking. This is the step most people don’t really know much about, but it’s pretty vital in making sure things work smoothly. Open it up in gedit.
Scroll down a bit and you’ll get to the parts we need to edit.
If you’re changing the location of your virtual machines, find the xml tags for “MachineEntry” and change the source path. If you’re changing the location of your virtual disk images, find the xml tags for “HardDisk” and change the location there. As you can see, each machine is tied to a disk image by its UUID, which should not be changed. If you’re moving virtual machines to a new computer, be sure to copy these this file over and replace the previous configuration file.
In my particular case, I just wanted to move the disk image to a more spacious drive, so I left the other things intact.
If you’re changing hosts between Windows and Linux, be sure to change the version declaration at the top of the file to say “windows” instead of “linux” as well.
Once you’ve moved the .vdi file, fire up VirtualBox and go to File > Virtual Media Manager.
Click on the old .vdi file and click remove. Now, click “Add,” navigate to its new location, and click “Open.” Click “OK.”
Now that the new .vdi is added to VirtualBox’s list, we have to attach it to your virtual machine. At the main screen select it, go to “Settings,” and click on the “Storage” panel.
Under the appropriate IDE controller, click the “Add Attachment” button. You’ll see a hard disk get added automatically, but it probably won’t be the correct one.
Click it and on right side, under “Hard Disk,” choose the correct .vdi file. Click “OK.”
If you followed all the steps and you edited the VirtualBox.xml correctly you should be able to start up the machine without any problems! There are a few hairy areas, so if things aren’t working, be sure you’re using the correct paths and you’ve edited only the relevant areas of VirtualBox.xml.
The overall process is a bit more intricate than just copying and pasting, but it’s still relatively quick and painless. Share your backup stories about VirtualBox in the comments!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
What Files Should You Backup On Your Windows PC?
Everybody always tells you to make sure that you are backing up your PC, but what does that really mean? And what files do you actually need to backup? Today we’ll walk you through the basics of backing up your PC, what you should back up, and why.
Of course, these rules won’t fit every scenario, so you’ll need to use a little common sense—think about what is most important to you on your PC, and make sure that you’ve figured out how to backup those files.
Photo by Son of Groucho
The All-Important Rule of Backups
The primary principle of backing up your data is that any important data should exist in two or more physical locations at once. You cannot create a backup and delete the original, or else it is no longer really a backup.
You might think this is obvious, but you’d be surprised how often I’ve been approached by readers that lost their data after their “backup” drive died.
What Should You Use for Backing Up Your PC?
There are lots of different applications that you can use to make backups of your files, and there’s even one built into Windows… It doesn’t matter which tool you use as long as it does a decent job of creating backups.
Local Backups
It’s important to create local backups to an external drive or another PC for speed of restoring files should something bad happen, and also because this is going to be the quickest way to create backups.We’ve also got guides to show you how to use Backup and Restore in Windows, GFI Backup, Macrium Reflect, and even Simple Backup in Linux—but the tool isn’t that important—what you are backing up is.
Online Backups
There are a number of paid online backup services like Mozy, Carbonite, Spideroak, and Jungledisk, and there are also some file sync services like Dropbox and SugarSync that provide backup type of capability. These are all excellent secondary backup services, but probably shouldn’t replace a regular backup just because they will take a long time to restore.Note: if you’re looking for a great way to keep a folder in sync between PCs and accessible from anywhere, Dropbox rocks. We love it. Otherwise, you should probably check out Mozy, since it has a unique ability to create local backups as well as online backups.
System Image Backups
Rather than simply backing up files, you can create a complete backup of your system that can be restored over top of your system. The only problem with creating these type of backups is that they require a real lot of drive space. The best bet is to create an image when your system is up and running and everything is installed, and then you can use it to more easily restore everything rather than reinstalling everything manually.We’ve got guides to help you create a system image using the built-in tools in Windows 7 or Vista, how to restore from that system image, how to make a drive image using an Ubuntu Live CD, or even how to do it with a freeware application called DriveImageXML. If you’re looking for a paid solution that works really well, you can check out Acronis.
What Files Should You Backup?
The most important files to backup are probably your documents, pictures, music, and other user files, but they are not the only files that you need to backup. Let’s walk through some of them.
- Documents: You should backup your entire documents folder all the time. This should be a no-brainer.
- Music: If you’ve paid lots of money for MP3 downloads, you’ll probably be sad to lose them. Make sure to include this folder. Note: if you’re an iTunes user, you should make sure to backup your iTunes folder, which is thankfully usually inside this directory.
- Pictures & Videos: It’s really sad when I get emails from people saying their hard drive died and they lost all their pictures of their family. The photos might not have actually costed you anything, but you’ll probably be more sad about losing memories than paying for music downloads again.
- Desktop Email: If you’re using Outlook or Windows Live Mail, make absolutely certain that you’ve backed up the files from these applications. Outlook stores all your email in a .PST file, and here’s how to find it.
- Application Settings: If you look within the AppData folders, you’ll see directories for each and every application you’re running. These settings can often be restored from a backup so you don’t have to tweak everything again. Just head into C:\Users\Username\AppData\ to see the Local, Roaming, and LocalLow folders that contain many settings for your applications.
- Virtual Machines: If you use virtual machines for real work, you should probably create a backup of your virtual machines at some point. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend backing these up every single night, but you should at least consider some type of backup plan.
- Bookmarks: Most browsers other than Internet Explorer actually make it difficult to backup your bookmarks using Windows Backup, but the much better option is to sync your bookmarks to the cloud. Naturally, we’ve got a full list of all the bookmark syncing services that you can use. If you’d rather use local backup, you can simply backup the application settings folder and restore that—this works especially well for Firefox in our experience.
Backup These Files More Easily
Instead of trying to find all those locations, backup your entire Users folder, which is at C:\Users\Username in Windows 7 or Vista, and C:\Documents and Settings\Username for Windows XP. This will include all of those files, unless you’ve stored them somewhere else.Files You Should Not Bother Backing Up
There’s simply no reason to backup these directories:
- Windows: There’s almost never a reason to backup your Windows directory, as you’re going to have to reinstall the whole thing anyway, so this backup will likely do you no good.
- Program Files: You’re going to have to reinstall your applications if your computer dies and you have to reinstall. Why bother backing up all these files?
It’s worth noting that if you create a system image backup, you won’t have to reinstall all of your applications, and backing up these folders would still be pointless.
When should you backup?
The best bet is to backup your files on a fairly regular basis–daily if possible. If you’re using an online backup solution, they are often configured to immediately start syncing any changed files when your PC is idle for a little while. This can be a great way to keep your files safe without having to wait for the next backup.
Hopefully these tips will help you backup your files and keep you protected. Be sure to check out our checklist guide for reinstalling Windows in the unfortunate event that you do need to start over from scratch.
Don’t forget the most important rule: any important data should exist in two or more physical locations at once.
Friday, September 24, 2010
How to Backup Your Linux PC with Simple Backup
It doesn’t matter if you are using Windows, OS X, or Linux, everyone should do regular backups of their information. In Linux one of the easiest ways to do automated backups is with Simple Backup (SBackup). Here is how you can set up SBackup to make sure you have a backup of all your important files.
Install Simple Backup
To install SBackup open your menu and click on the software center. Search for SBackup and install the software from the search results.
Note: These screenshots are taken from Linux Mint 9 but the steps will work on Ubuntu and most Ubuntu based distros.
Configure SBackup
SBackup’s recommended settings assumes you have /var/backup pointing to a separate hard drive. That is usually not the case on personal laptops and desktops so it would probably be a better idea to select custom backup settings and change the settings as you need.
Next click on the include tab and add any files or directories you would like backup up. The backup program runs as root so you are able to backup any directory even if your user does not have access to them.
The next tab will have settings to exclude directories, file types (based on file extension), a regular expression (regex), or based on file size.
By default SBackup doesn’t back up most media files, so if you don’t already have a backup of your videos and music you will want to adjust the settings below to include them in the backups. Just make sure your backup hard drive has enough space to store all the media files.
It would also be recommended to change the max size setting because by default SBackup doesn’t backup anything larger than 95 MB.
The destination tab will allow you to select your destination folder, hard drive, or remote directory.
Although the remote directory only shows SSH and FTP, other protocols like SFTP and SMB are also supported. To enter a different protocol simply add the correct information to the beginning of the path and make sure you have the correct username and password in the path as well. The format for a network path is <protocol>://username:password@server/share. If you are backing up to a remote server you should also check the box to abort if the destination doesn’t exist otherwise the backup will be stored locally on your hard drive.
Alternatively you could also leave out the username:password information in the URI but you will be prompted for your credentials every time the backup starts.
The next tab will allow you to schedule your backups to automatically happen whenever you’d like. The backup uses cron to schedule the jobs so if you know how to use cron you can easily modify the schedule to your liking.
To prevent your hard drive from filling up, change the settings you want on the purging tab to delete old backups.
Once all your settings are the way you want, click save to write the changes to the config file.
Click backup now to test your backup settings and make sure your backup starts.
Note: In Linux Mint 9 and Ubuntu 10.04 there is a bug with SBackup. To run the backup you will need to open a terminal and run “sudo sbackupd &”. To fix this bug you can either upgrade to Linux Mint 10 or Ubuntu 10.10 or compile SBackup 11.2 from source.
Always double check that your backup files are writing successfully, the folder will be time stamped with the date, time, and computer name.
Restore From a Backup
To restore your files, open Simple Backup Restore and select the backup location and the files you would like to restore from the list.
Note: In Linux Mint 9 using SBackup 10.5 I was not able to restore files from my remote directory without mounting the share to a local directory. This should be fixed with SBackup 11.2.
Simple Backup project on Sourceforge
Friday, August 20, 2010
LuckyBackup Makes Backups and Syncing Easy on Linux [Downloads]
LuckyBackup Makes Backups and Syncing Easy on Linux
Linux only: When it comes to backups, there's no messing with rsync for reliability. If running the Unix utility through a command line isn't your cup of tea, luckyBackup puts an easy-to-grasp front-end, making automated backups and folder syncing a click-and-go matter.
We've covered other rsync-based backup utilities for Linux before—Back in Time and FlyBack come to mind—but luckyBackup takes a far less involved approach to rsync backups. If all you want is to have this and that folder transfer over to this or that folder on an external drive, a USB device, or a network share, it's easy to set that up with luckyBackup, and make that action run on a regular basis. If you'd like a two-way synchronization, luckyBackup can handle that, too.
LuckyBackup is a free download for Linux systems only. Source code and compiled packages for many distributions are available at the home page; Ubuntu users can install the app from their default repositories, or by clicking this luckyBackup Ubuntu install link.
Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.
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