Attention Computer Person Who Can Come To WFMU Tomorrow Night.

[KickTheBobo]

did you try rebooting?

[Stupornaut]

did you try rebooting?

KTB, IT

[A.M. Thomas]

I recommend backing up all laptop files online.  iDisk, Jungle Disk, etc.  Saves a lot of heartaches.

This sounds like something for me. Any recommendations? Experiences? iDisk seems to be Mac only. Jungle Disk is amazon-owned - wtf is that all about?

iDisk is Mac only, yep.  Jungle Disk as far as I know is not owned by Amazon.  It uses Amazon's servers which they make available to anyone to use.

Jungle/iDisk are good for when you want to keep a bunch of documents in sync between computers.  So I have an iDisk with local copies (that sync) on my laptop and my desktop, so I can work from either.

A simpler solution is to just get a sftp site somewhere and have stuff be automatically backed up to the internet.   Or you can put yourself on a waiting list for a https://www.backblaze.com/ invite.  http://mozy.com/ is pretty popular, too.

I just think that with the kind of work people do on laptops you want backups ASAP, not just to happen when you get home.

Yesno:

What do you think of solid-state drives?  I know they're very pricey at the moment, but I'm sure they'll become more reasonable in a couple of years.  Will they reduce, or even eliminate, our collective hard drive problems?  How much more reliable are they than conventional hard drives?

[yesno]

Solid state drives are less prone to mechanical failure.  They're not perfect; in fact, they're slower to write to.

But Tom's problem was not a hard drive problem.  And you would want to back up a laptop just because of loss and theft.  Or smashing/spilling type damage that could break anything electronic.