Sunday, February 12, 2012

Taking Care of Your Computer for Free -- Bootable Backup / Cloud Backup -- Talk at the Kinnelon Library Feb. 16 7:00 PM


Don't Just Be a User! Take Care of that Relationship! With Your Computer!

I will be giving a talk at the Kinnelon Library Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7 PM, which is the 2nd of 6 such talks a month apart, on the subject of taking care of your Windows PC, new or old, with special attention in Part 2 to:

Software to Backup Your Computer including :

1) How to be Rebooted and Back in Business in minutes after a system drive failure.

2) What is the difference between an Archive backup and a Mirror backup and why you should care.
     Hint: One boots the computer and the other ... doesn't.

The free software includes disk imaging software available from any of the following links:
They are all good and can do the basic cloning task -- some offer more and some have limitations -- I encourage those of you who are interested to try them out.

For our purposes, the critical parts of the cloning task are:

Unattended Scheduled Backup (rather than just manual backup)

Rock Solid Reliability

Verification (so you know your mirror image is not corrupt)

I will also talk about some commercial software that is not free, and why I still think it is a good value, in this case: Casper 7.0.  There are commercial versions of most of the free software listed above as well and may offer those of you who care features (and support) you are willing to pay for.

We will then take a look at some of the free and up-to-5 GB On-Line Backup Services available that can protect your critical data with unattended backup off-site -- such as iDrive and Mozy. And another cool file protection and sharing service that's free -- Dropbox.

So if you worry about what will happen if your computer's hard drive dies, and how you will get back in business, come on by the library Thursday night, at 7 PM, Feb 16, and find out.

We will repeat our "Open Mike" period at the end of the talk so you can find out why your computer isn't doing what you want:

Ask Your Questions and Solve Your Problems --"Open Mike" -- Questions such as

1) Is my machine too old? When do I need a new machine?

2) What is the best Free On-Line Backup?

3) Why does my computer ... ?

4) If you have a laptop with a problem, bring it along and we'll take a quick look.

5) Questions and on-the-spot diagnosis will be limited by the time available!!!

All of you Kinnelon and North Jersey people, and everybody else, are welcome to come.

Call the Kinnelon Library at 973 838 1321 and reserve a spot.

See you there!

~Ted


PS: This talk pertains to PCs running Windows 7, Vista and XP

Photo Credit: various websites

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...