Taking the net to India -part 2	Page 1 2 3

Backing up and restoring your important data

Laptop backup on the road in India

©neoncarrot

All computers suffer data loss at some point in their lives; crashes, power surges or hard drive failures can cause data to be lost. For most people, some backup of important data is essential, and to get everything up and running again it's a good idea to come with copies of the main software you use on the computer or Palm device on a CD-ROM, just in case you have to reinstall.

If all you are doing is email, keeping a journal and maybe writing a novel, the text files generated are pretty small. Probably the best way to back these kind of small files up is to email them to yourself periodically, using 2 or 3 reliable email accounts held especially for the purpose on separate servers. Then should the laptop or Palm decide to have a major trauma, all your writing is safe and easily accessible by email.

If you have a website, you can always back text files up to a directory of your server, obviously one that is inaccessible to those browsing the site. Use an FTP client such as Cute FTP for windows, or Interarchy for Mac. I don't know of an FTP solution for Palm devices, if anyone has ideas how to do that, please let me know.

For windows users, computer engineers are easy to find, in most large towns, and relatively inexpensive compared to the West. They should be able to reformat your hard drive and reinstall the Operating system for little money should it all go really pear shaped and you don't know how to do it yourself.

Older laptops often come with floppy drives - useful to exchange info with other computers in India - or accessory ones are fairly cheap for those that don't. Floppies are very easy to corrupt, and hence a lousy idea for backup, but maybe useful in conjunction with emailing. Make more than one copy of each backup and keep them separately in a safe place.

Portable CD burning

	©Freecom
	The Freecom Traveller 2can run on battery or mains power

If you're archiving reams of pictures from your digicam, floppies are of no use at all, and emailing is impractical at modem speeds. Modern portable CD writers are the best for this sort of backup, and coming down in price all the time. Freecom Technologies have a range of small, light "travel" CD writers that can be run either from the mains or their own battery, and can connect to the laptop via USB (Universal Serial Bus), Firewire or the PCMCIA slot depending on the adapter supplied. Some cybercafes in major towns and tourist centres have CD burners these days, and if you have a network card installed in the laptop, you could dump the pics and other data onto their machine then burn a backup, avoiding having to carry a burner yourself. Many modern laptops come with a built in CD burner, or occasionally DVD burner, either as standard or as a 3rd party accessory. This will obviously save space and weight, and makes CD burning ridiculously easy and convenient.

For irreplaceable images from a digital camera, its a good idea to get two copies of the CD made and then mail one home, or at least keep the two copies seperately. Its fairly rare, but CDs can get scratched or damaged enough to be unworkable.

CD-R media widely available in India

	©neoncarrot
	CD-R media is widely available and cheap in India

Blank CD media is fairly easy to obtain in most largeish towns in India. If you're in Delhi you can pick CD's up at Palika Bazaar in Connaught Place or a bit cheaper at the computer sales area in Nehru place in South Delhi. "No name" unbranded CDs start at about 8 Rs each, and brand names like Sony, Phillips etc can be had for 400 Rs for a pack of 25. CD writers can occasionally be fussy about the brand of CD they are fed, and may suffer burn failures with one brand but not another. If you find a brand that works well, stick to it. The unbranded disks tend to have a higher failure rate, although this will depend on the burner.

CD burning software

©Roxio
Roxio Toast can burn to CD or DVD in many different formats

For CD burning on the Mac, the choice is between Apple CD Burner, which comes as part of all versions of the Mac OS from 9.1 onward, and the venerable Roxio Toast. Apple CD burner is somewhat limited in function, but easy to use and well integrated with the Mac OS. Roxio Toast is really the Mac standard burning software. "Lite" versions come bundled with many third party burners aimed at Mac users, and are adequate for the majority of tasks. The full version of Toast has many more features (at a price) and will burn disks to most formats including Mac OS, Mac OS extended, ISO9660, and VCD for video. Recent versions will also burn to DVD writers.

For PCs, there is a wider choice ranging from paid for software to shareware and freeware. Roxio Easy CD creator often comes bundled with burners. Nero is a more full featured package for the PC. A friend described the difference between the two packages thus:

If Easy CD creator is like a chirpy if annoying little American kid of a programme, then Nero is its unshaven German uncle who commanded a U-boat in the war. It demands your complete attention throughout the process, throwing hundreds of different dialogue boxes at you but providing no indication of the consequences of your choices. "Do you want ISO 9600?" and "Do you want session at once or disc image?" - How the hell would I know? - just copy this fucking CD, it's due back tomorrow.

Portable hard drives

©Smartdisk
The Smartdisk Firefly is tiny; less than 10 cm long, but with a 5 Gb capacity and is powered via the firewire connection

For a laptop, an external hard drive is another option. The ones that come in large cases intended for desktop use are unsuitable for travel, but there are plenty of models now available that are intended for travel such as those from Smartdisk or Lacie. Sizes vary, but the smallest are tiny at less than 10cm long and weighing less than 100g. Some require mains power, but if you have a Firewire port or USB 2, a compatible drive will draw its power from that, Sizes vary for small drives from 5Gb up to 60 GB. The drive cases are usually robust, and the mechanism is often rated to withstand more knocks than a desktop drive would be.

	©neoncarrot
	The minds@work digital media wallet downloads from Flash media cards

Some specialised hard drives now come complete with slots to connect the flash cards used in digital cameras, and a simple LCD interface to allow the JPG files to be transferred from the card to the hard drive. They also come with standard connections for USB or FireWire, and usually have an internal rechargeable battery in addition to a mains adapter. The range of sizes currently goes up to about 60Gb. The major advantage of these is that you can back images up easily without access to a computer, although if you have a modern HiRes digital camera and you take a lot of pictures, you will find that even 60Gb doesn't go such a long way, and archiving 60Gb to CD-R will take a long, long time.

©apple computer
Apple's iPod

If you intend taking an Apple laptop with a Firewire port, one of the advantages of using an Apple iPod for your MP3 collection is that it can also be used to back up data. iPod comes in sizes up to 40 Gb and will sync your MP3 playlists with Apple's iTunes software automatically. It also has limited notebook functions, and you can use it to read text documents from the laptop if you are really desperate. The rechargeable batteries are rated to last 3 hours on a single charge. If you are considering a small external hardrive for backup, the iPod is worth a look if your backup requirements aren't too large. The iPod is also now available with USB connection for Windows.

Backing up Palm PDA devices to Flash memory

	©Wintec
	The Wintec backup Springboard module

In addition to emailing files for backup, most of the more modern Palm and Handspring devices allow you to insert a Flash card backup device to backup the whole contents of the device with one click. If you buy a large enough card, you can also store books in text form and put them on the Palm as necessary. Using a software utility allows you to compress the backups, saving space. Because Palm OS devices have no hard disk, a flat battery will cause it to lose all data other than the operating system. They also do crash completely on occasion requiring a hard reset which will also wipe data. A flash card allows complete restoration to the last backup. Different makes of device use different formats of card so check compatability with your device and the kind of software you intend to use before buying.

The prices of the standard formats of card are coming down all the time, and these may be worth purchasing in one of the shops in Palika Bazaar in Connaught place where prices are considerably lower than those I found in Bangkok. The guarantee isn't worth a lot, but as prices are low, that is less important.

A small warning with these cards. Backing up often (good idea) and moving data on and off the card will cause some fragmentation of data. If this gets too bad the card may have problems, crash and need to be reformatted. Its an idea to periodically reformat the card and start the backups afresh with the card defragmented. Just make sure all the data from the card is stored on the Palm device before doing this.

Palm users should bring the sync cable that came with the device, and the original CD containing the computer desktop software. Its probably also a good idea to have another CD made containing all of the software you use on the device and any reference documents you have before leaving for India. If it all goes wrong and you're not using a flash card, you can install the desktop software on a cybercafe computer, and reinstall all software and data to the device via the sync cable. Outside the major cities, USB ports are still a relative rarity on public computers in India, so if you have a standard serial connector as well, bring it.

Part 2 page 3: software>>