That’s great, but what about scheduling automatic daily backups of your changed documents to the cloud? For me, it’s important to have a second copy of my recently changed work files in the cloud, just in case my PC doesn’t boot next morning, for example. We need a way to automatically select documents you’ve worked on that day, and at a preset time, copy those files to your CX folder for syncing to the cloud. I’m going to show you how I do this.

Get some free cloud storage

If you haven’t already done so, sign up for free cloud storage and make a note where your desktop folder is for syncing to the cloud. For me, it’s C:\Users\<user name> \Desktop\CX Sync.

Create a batch file to copy daily changed files to the CX folder

Yes, I know batch files are a little old school but, once set up correctly, they get the job done. We’ll make one to execute a simple command to copy today’s changed files to our syncing folder, but first why select just changed files? Well, if you have a good backup routine in place, all your documents older than today should be on your external drive anyway. During the current day, you’ve been editing documents, photos or videos and these current files should be backed up to your external drive and the cloud at the end of the day. You could use a backup program but why download another utility when you already have the tools to do it for free in Windows.

We can create a batch file with a text editor like Notepad++. In the batch file, the command Robocopy is used to copy your daily files from the source folders to a destination folder, your syncing folder. Robocopy is available in Windows Vista and Windows 7.  The format for the Robocopy command here is Robocopy <source folder> <destination folder> switches. The switch /MAXAGE:1 makes the command select just today’s files (i.e. it excludes files older than 1 day). The switch /S tells Robocopy to copy subfolders. Open your text editor and copy and paste the following lines to make your batch file:

echo off

echo Daily files to CX

Robocopy "c:\Users\<user name>\Documents" "C:\Users\<user name>\Desktop\CX Sync" /MAXAGE:1 /S

echo Backup complete
pause

You’ll have to edit <user name> to your own user name and you’ll have to change some details to point to your correct source and destination folders. The destination folder should be your syncing folder, in my case CX Sync. If the source or destination paths contain spaces in them, enclose these in double quotes as shown above. Now save it as a batch file (.bat) on your desktop, NOT as a text file (.txt). Give it a sensible name, something like Daily docs to CX.bat. Here’s how the Save as screen looks in Notepad++:

Try it out by double clicking this batch file on your Desktop  to see if it’s copying today’s changed files to your syncing folder.

Schedule your daily backup with Windows Task Scheduler

So far so good I hope. But so far we’re relying on remembering to click this batch file each day. Much better if we could automate this process to run the batch file at a specific time each day, say 9pm when all work for the day is finished and we are doing other things on our PC. Well, we can set up Windows Task Scheduler to do this.

Click the Windows Start button and key in Task in the search window. This should bring up Task Scheduler on the list. Click it, then right click Task Scheduler Library and choose Create Task. Under the General tab, fill out the task Name:

Then click on the Triggers tab and click New. Fill out the time for your scheduled backup to run and make sure Daily is selected. Click OK.

Then click on the Actions tab and click New. Fill out the location of your batch file by browsing to your desktop and selecting the file. Click OK.

Select the Conditions tab and set it up as shown.

I found it best to uncheck the default ‘Start the task only if the computer is idle for:’ I want it to run right away at 9pm with no delay. Click OK to complete setting up your scheduled backup task and close the Task Scheduler.

When this scheduled task runs at your chosen time, it runs in the background anyway. The pause command at the end of the batch file means the window will remain open so you can check it has run correctly.  When you’re satisfied everything is okay, press any key to close the batch file window.

So there we have a free route to set up a scheduled backup of your daily edited files to the cloud without downloading any utilities. Eventually, when your free online storage starts to fill up, you can delete some of the older files to free up space. They should all be on your external drive anyway. How do you schedule backups? Have you any suggestions to improve this routine. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I remembered reading that VLC media player does audio and video conversions so I gave it a try. Launch VLC and click Media, Convert/Save (Ctrl-R). Click Add and browse to your m4a file,  click Open, then click Convert/Save.

Then under Destination, select a folder and name for your converted file remembering to add the .mp3 suffix. Under Settings, select Audio – MP3, then select Start.

Along the bottom of the next screen, the Play progress bar actually indicates the progress of the audio conversion. Conversion of an 80MB m4a file took 5 to 10 minutes on my PC. I also checked out the conversion of m4v video format to mp3 audio and that works well too.

So there’s a great way to convert audio and video file formats using VLC without adding any extra free conversion utilities to your PC.

I read an interesting post recently on 10 Snapshots You Should Keep in Your Phone’s Photo Album but it was one of the comments and follow-up answers that really caught my eye. How do you securely store PIN numbers if you have to so they can’t be easily identified? Personally for the cards I use regularly I’ve memorized the PIN code, but some cards I only use occasionally and need to store the PIN in a secure form so only I can identify it. What I hit on was disguising the PIN as a date or birthday and storing that in my address book or as note on my phone. For example, a 4 digit PIN of 6238 would convert to 6th February 1938 in my notes, but I always felt this was a little too easily guessable.

Lynn posted this response on the above blog post:

I give all my cards-with-pincodes ‘names’ and include the pincode in the phone numbers attributed to those names in my contact list. Only I know what I call them, but, just in case, only I know which four digits of the 10 in the # are the pincode ones.

That sounded perfect for me. In the UK, we typically have 5-digit STD codes and 6-digit phone numbers, so my example PIN could be saved as a fake name/phone number like: Sid 01234-623810. You can see where I’ve put the PIN. Obviously, as Lynn says you have to remember which ‘name’ goes with which card. This method seems to me to be pretty secure, particularly as the PIN reminder is stored on your phone, completely separately from your wallet or purse with your cards.

How do you store PIN numbers when you have to? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: ATM keypad 1/4

Restoring Thunderbird on the same or another Windows PC using MozBackup

On my main Windows 7 PC, I ran a Thunderbird backup to my external hard drive using MozBackup as described in my earlier post in the first link. I then installed the current version of Thunderbird on my backup Windows XP PC and also installed MozBackup on it. On both the Windows 7 PC and the Windows XP PC, Thunderbird installs to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird. Then I restored Thunderbird from my external hard drive to my backup Windows XP PC by running MozBackup, choosing ‘Restore a profile’ and selecting Thunderbird to restore:

I then chose the default profile to restore and browsed to the directory on the external hard drive with the Thunderbird backup. Everything restored perfectly, even after backing up Thunderbird on a Windows 7 PC and restoring on a Windows XP PC. This despite the fact that the emails and settings are stored in different places in each Windows OS. In Windows 7, Thunderbird emails and settings are stored at C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\ while in Windows XP, the emails and settings are at C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\. MozBackup must be checking the directory structure, doesn’t find the Windows 7 structure, determines which directory structure is present (Windows XP) and automatically restores to that directory. That’s very nice. Of course, restoring Thunderbird on your main PC with MozBackup is just as simple.

Restoring Thunderbird on a Linux Netbook

So far so good, I’ve managed to restore all my emails either on the same or another Windows PC using MozBackup. But I’ve also got an Acer Aspire netbook running Ubuntu. Could I restore Thunderbird there too? MozBackup doesn’t run on Linux so I had to copy the Thunderbird profile this time. First I installed Thunderbird on my netbook running Ubuntu. Then all you have to do is copy the Thunderbird profile in the C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\ on my Windows 7 PC into the folder /home/<user name>/.thunderbird/ on the Ubuntu netbook. For those not familiar with file management in Ubuntu, here’s the procedure I used. I copied the C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird directory on the Windows 7 PC onto a USB stick then plugged the stick into my Ubuntu netbook. When Nautilus opened, I navigated to the folder <user name> at the top. I clicked F3 to get an extra viewing pane then in the left pane, I clicked Ctrl-H to see hidden folders and files (the Thunderbird profile is in the hidden .thunderbird folder). Then I navigated down to the .thunderbird folder and double clicked it. In the right pane, I navigated to the USB stick shown in the listing on the left, and double clicked the Thunderbird folder in the right pane. This is what you should now see:

Then I dragged the files and folders present in the right pane to the left pane. I merged folders replacing everything. I launched Thunderbird and all the emails were present just as they were on my Windows 7 PC.

I should say I don’t need to sync my emails between different PCs, I just need a way to ensure that if my main PC packs up for whatever reason, I can be up and running with all my emails on my backup PC or my Linux netbook. Of course, when I do go travelling, I can now happily get all my emails in Thunderbird on my netbook, then when I return just reverse the above process to restore my current emails back to my main Windows 7 PC.

I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts on working with Thunderbird on different PCs and operating systems. Drop a comment below.

I’ve been using Shareaholic for a couple of years now. It’s a browser extension with a tremendous variety of options for sharing and saving links and is available for all the popular browsers including Chrome. I find it particularly useful for tweeting from webpages that don’t have Twitter share buttons. Surprisingly, there are quite a few around. But I don’t always like to tweet the link straightaway and prefer to space out tweets for my audience using Buffer, the tweet scheduling app. Just as an aside, another advantage of using Buffer is you can change your mind later and delete tweets from the Buffer queue if you like, before they go live.

Trouble is, my Buffer browser extension for Chrome hasn’t worked for a few months now, probably a conflict with another extension. So I looked again at Shareaholic, and sure enough, sharing with Buffer is there too and it works perfectly for me.

And there’s another bonus with using Buffer through the Shareaholic extension. I’m now able to delete my Buffer browser extension – and Evernote Web Clipper – so that’s two less buttons clogging up my Chrome bar and grabbing RAM. By the way, if you want to see how much memory your extensions are hogging in Chrome, press Shift-Esc when in Chrome to bring up Chrome Task Manager. Then disable or remove the extensions you don’t need or don’t use any more.

A ‘Life’ post today for a change. A couple of weeks ago, I had to go on a 3-day strict diet prior to undergoing a medical procedure. The procedure isn’t important I just had to have an empty bowel. Some of you may have gone through this yourselves but I thought I set out my experiences during the diet and what I learned from that.

On days 1 and 2  of the diet, I was only allowed to eat from the following: clear soup, eggs (poached or boiled), chicken, white fish, cheese, margarine, jelly marmalade or jelly jam, jelly, tea, coffee, Bovril, skimmed milk, boiled white rice, white bread (or toast).  Day 3 was fluids only – fruit juice, clear soup, Bovril, tea, coffee or water.

That’s not too bad I hear you say – and really it wasn’t. As you can see, the main meal on days 1 and 2 was basically plain chicken and white rice or white fish and white rice with a snack of a cheese sandwich or poached egg. Basic plain food, no sauces, no desserts, no junk. I managed to get through it all right, but it was quite difficult sitting down with the rest of the family and watching them eat regular meals as I ate my plain dish. To make things harder and give me a real challenge, we all went out to a restaurant on the evening of day 2. Watching the food being served up on our table and adjacent tables was a real temptation as I sat with just a glass of juice. My daughter gave me two strips of chargrilled chicken from her dish and it tasted just heavenly. Which takes me to my first point. I think if I hadn’t been on a diet and had chosen that chicken dish in the restaurant, I really wouldn’t have appreciated it as much as I should. I would have chomped through it without really stopping to savour the flavour, and I would probably have eaten too quickly and too much.

The third day of the diet actually wasn’t too bad. Even though it was only fluids, I went to bed that night not actually feeling hungry but feeling surprisingly good.

Lessons learned

During the diet, I actually bought a cookbook in a charity shop – Happy Days with the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. I couldn’t resist it. Yes, it helped me get through it all! On the night after my medical procedure, I decided I would try and cook more flavoursome meals in future, and eat smaller portions. The book actually makes the good point to slow down when you’re eating. ‘If you eat your food too quickly, your brain won’t pick up on the fact that you’re actually full up as quickly as it should, so you will carry on stuffing yourself until you’ve eaten too much. Eating slowly will ensure that your brain tells you when you’re full.’ I’m also going to try and cut down on biscuits and the junk which I didn’t really miss during the short diet.

Have you had to go on a diet? How did you manage? Did you feel better after it or learn anything in the process? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: Chicken pineapple salad and bread by Steve A Johnson

Inactivation and Deletion of Account
Microsoft will delete your account on the Passport Network if it remains inactive for an extended period of time. Inactivity is defined as a failure to sign in to any site or service on the Passport Network using your credentials.
If your credentials on the Passport Network are associated with a free MSN or Hotmail e-mail inbox, your account will be made inaccessible if it remains inactive for 120 days, and any account information you have provided will be deleted. If you have credentials on the Passport Network that are not associated with a free MSN or Hotmail e-mail inbox, your account will be made inaccessible if it remains inactive for 365 days, and any information you have provided will be deleted. Accounts associated with paid subscriptions for MSN or Hotmail are not made inaccessible due to inactivity.

These are the current terms as of April 2012, but will probably change in the coming months so if you are reading this post some time after April 2012, check the current terms.

Deletion of my account is probably a good thing and my own fault – I wasn’t using it. So I’ve signed up again  – and was able to use the same email address – and will make sure to access it regularly. This is just a warning to you that if you have a Windows Live ID, and a free MSN or Hotmail email, Messenger and SkyDrive accounts, make sure you access it regularly or it will all disappear!

I took a keen interest in all things tech back around 2007 when I wanted more than just music on my mp3 player. Initially, I tried news podcasts then searched around for something different. As a PC user, I looked for a PC related podcast and hit on the Mike Tech Show first off. A great show with great tips, links and recommendations and it was from a listener email there that I found out about MakeUseOf. Yes, it’s not obviously apparent what this blog is about from the name, but in effect, it’s really about making use of tech software and web services. From their website

The aim of MakeUseOf is to guide you through the web and tell you about hot websites that you have never heard of, best software programs, and all kinds of “how to” tips for Windows, Mac and Linux computer users.

From very early on, this has been one of my top tech blogs for tips and recommendations on great software, apps and web services. And not just me; they have around 450,000 active subscribers.

As I browse through the latest tech posts in my couple of hundred feeds in Google Reader, I’m constantly finding that, for me, MakeUseOf is number one for posts which catch my attention and which I have to read through, bookmark and ‘make use of’ as they say. I’ve learned so much from these posts over the years. Not only do they have great tech posts, but they’ve also published a number of tremendous free pdf format guides available for download. These cover everything from Linux to Reddit to WordPress. Or ask a tech question and get it answered at MakeUseOf Answers and find the best websites, software and apps at MakeUseOf The Best Of.

Let me say I’m not sponsored by MakeUseOf or affiliated to them in any way, just as always trying to pass on great recommendations. So subscribe to MakeUseOf in your RSS reader or follow them on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. You’ll find all the links at the bottom of their home page. And coming back to the subject of tech podcasts, three members of the MakeUseOf team put out a regular informative tech podcast called Technophilia which I now subscribe to. Check it out as well.

I came across Archify a couple of months ago after a post on the Next Web and decided to try it. So far I’m pretty impressed with this beta web service. Archify stores pages you visit online. It indexes the contents of the pages and takes a snapshot. You can archive social media updates, or just the pages you browse to. A bit like bookmarking but without assigning tags – at least at the moment. They may add this feature later. In the process, you build up an archive of the pages you visit which you can search through later.

Controlling which pages are archived

Secure HTTPS pages aren’t archived and you can also control which pages are archived from the amount of time you spend on them. Right click the Archify browser icon and select Options. Here you can set Archify to ignore pages viewed shorter than a user defined time. I’ve chosen 8 seconds. Any longer than this and I’m interested in the page and it’s probably worth archiving. In addition, you can set up a list of sites you don’t want archived. Archify call this a blacklist. I found that it’s pretty important to build up a good comprehensive blacklist early on otherwise you will swamp your archive with stuff you just don’t need there. Remember that Archify is working away all the time archiving all those pages you visit. To quickly blacklist a site just click the Archify button and you will get the following options:

Searching your archive

To perform a search of your archive at any time, right click the Archify browser button, and select Archify. Text in the search box is very large, I don’t know why. No doubt that’ll be fixed later. One other thing I’d like to see implemented is phrase search as with other search engines. At the moment, enclosing two search words in quotes doesn’t affect the search results. If you’re performing a search on say Twitter or Google, you can choose to have your archived pages searched as well. Just  right click the Archify browser icon and select Options. Then check the boxes against the services where you also want to have your archive search displayed.

Strange that it doesn’t seem to have attracted much attention so far. A search for Archify on Twitter doesn’t turn up much. Some concerns were expressed in the comments to the post I linked to earlier about privacy, but as they say themselves, you control what you archive, and it’s all free while in beta. Eventually basic Archify accounts will be free and additional features available only to premium accounts. So sign up and give Archify a try.

As you’ll see, I backup my registry, browser profiles etc. to a folder called My Backups which I created under My Documents. The beauty of this is that whenever My Documents is backed up, the My Backups folder is automatically included. Then I backup all the data and settings to an external 1TB hard drive. I also backup the documents I am working on to the cloud daily. Hopefully I’ve covered all the bases here so that if disaster strikes and my hard drive fails suddenly and the data can’t be recovered, I’ll be able to get all my data and settings back reasonably quickly.

Preparation

First off, I delete temporary files, history, cookies, etc. using CCleaner to prevent backing up unnecessary files. If you’re going to follow my routine, create a folder called My Backups under My Documents. You may also need an online backup service although this isn’t essential. I use CX (Cloud Experience) which gives 10GB of free online space, perfect for daily backups of documents I’ve been working on.

Backup the Windows Registry

I’ve given two choices here.

1. Export the registry backup using regedit:
Click Start, Run, and type regedit
File, Export
Save as: Registry backup date.reg
Save in: C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups

2. Or use the free program ERUNTgui
Once installed, go to e.g. C:\Program Files\ERUNTGui
Run ERUNTgui
Save registry backup in: C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups

Backup drivers

You don’t need to do this backup regularly, just when you add new hardware. I use a free program called DriverMax (version 5.5). I’ve tried a newer version and for some reason it doesn’t backup as many drivers. I prefer the GUI on version 5.5 too. You can get DriverMax 5.5 on cnet here at the moment, or Google ‘DriverMax 5.5’ if that link is no longer valid when you read this article.
Once installed, go to Start, All Programs, DriverMax and Run DriverMax (version 5.5)
Go To Driver Backup and Restore, Backup drivers, Next, Select all drivers
Exports drivers to C:\Users\XXX\Documents\My Drivers\ (doesn’t seem to matter that this is not empty)

Backup Thunderbird

If you use the Thunderbird email client, you need to backup your emails and settings. Download the free program MozBackup

Run MozBackup
Select Backup a profile
Select Thunderbird (as shown above)
Select profile: for me it’s default
Save in: C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups
Password protect: No
Select all details to backup
Took 3 minutes to backup my 640MB of email data
Because of the backup size I just retain the last 2 Thunderbird backups

Backup Firefox

Run MozBackup again (FavBackup will also backup Firefox as mentioned later)
Select Backup a profile
Select Firefox
Select profile: for me it’s default
Save in: C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups
Password protect: No
Select all details to backup
Took 20 s
I just retain the last 2 backups

Backup Google Chrome

Download the free program Google Chrome Backup (FavBackup will also backup Firefox as mentioned later)
Close Google Chrome Chrome
Go to C:\Program Files\Google Chrome Backup
Run gcb
Select Run Wizard
Select Backup
Backup default profile
Select Backup path C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups
Empty cache before backup

Backup Internet Explorer

Download the free program FavBackup. Works with IE6, 7 and 8. I should mention that FavBackup will backup other browser profiles as well – Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome and Flock, so you could use FavBackup instead of the backup solutions just mentioned for Firefox and Chrome. See which you prefer or use both for good measure.

It saves the profiles as just default.dat so I found it best to save these to subfolders in the My Backups folder

Select the Browser profiles you want to backup.

Select everything you want to backup and choose the backup location:

Save profiles in:
C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups\FavBackup\Chrome
C:\Users\XXX\My Documents\My Backups\FavBackup\Firefox

Backup data and settings to external hard drive

Now down to the main part of the backup – backing up all the data and settings to an external hard drive. There’s a myriad of free applications which will do this – SyncBack and EaseUS Todo Backup are two examples. There’s a nice example of using SyncBack here, but I’ve chosen to use Fabs AutoBackup 3 and if you follow that link, it shows all the files, folders and settings it will backup. I’ve listened to enough podcasts by PC repair techs to know this is a great solution for backing up data and settings. The greatest recommendation they come up with is that after recovering a PC for a client using FABs AutoBackup, all the settings have been restored and the client gets his PC back just as he used to have it set up. That’s good enough for me. It’s not free though, but for home use, FABs AutoBackup 3 is just 4.90 euro so that’s great value and covers 1 year of updates. It’s very simple to use:

Run FABs Autobackup 3
Tick: Backup in subfolder date-user and check through everything you want to backup.
Backup to E:\FABS Backup\ (my external hard drive is the E: drive, yours may be different).

Backup daily to the cloud

I don’t do a full backup to the cloud. Any important documents I’ve been working on during that day I backup to CX. Once installed, you just drag your files to the CX Cloud folder on your PC and they get synced to your free 10GB online account.

Backup a list of installed applications

Okay, so your hard drive has failed and you managed to restore your data and settings from your backup drive to your new hard drive, what about all your apps? Do you remember what you had installed? Well, I’ve included some ways to back up a list of your installed software and the Start menu which will help you remember what you had installed. Thanks to PC Mech for this:

Click Start, Run and type cmd
At the command prompt, type wmic
Then copy the following line (except the text in brackets) and paste it at the command prompt (right click in command prompt box and click Paste):
/output:C:\InstallListdate.txt product get name,version (insert the current date in the file name but don’t use hyphens in the date, e.g. InstallList040412.txt)
The routine has finished when the prompt wmic:root\cli> reappears
Type Exit twice to leave the command prompt and then move the file to the My Backups folder.

Backup Start-menu

Again thanks to PC Mech for this:

Click Start, Run and type cmd
Then copy the following line (except the text in brackets) and paste it at the command prompt (right click in command prompt box and click Paste):
DIR /S "%PROGRAMDATA%\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\START MENU" > C:\Startmenudate.txt (insert the current date in the file name but don’t use hyphens in the date, e.g. Startmenu040412.txt)
Type Exit to leave the command prompt and then move the file to the My Backups folder.

Create a screenshot of installed programs

I use the free program PicPick to create screenshots – it’s useful because you will need to be able to capture a scrolling window of the list of programs. Download PicPick here.

Click Start, Control Panel, Programs and Features
This will list all your installed programs
Use the Screen Capture utility of PicPick and select Scrolling Window
Move the mouse over the window you want to capture. It will have a red outline border; click the left mouse button then let go and wait patiently as it scrolls down to the bottom of the list of applications. Then it opens the list in PicPick editor.
Save the screenshot as Installed programs.jpg in the usual backup folder.

Where to store your backups

My daily document backups are in the cloud and my full data and settings backups are on my external hard drive beside my PC. If you can afford it, it’s a really good idea to purchase a second external hard drive and swap them out on a weekly basis. Always keep one off-site, say at your parents, in case of fire or theft at your own home.

How often to backup

This is really up to you but obviously the more often the better. Here’s my schedule:

New files (documents, photos, etc)
To CX (cloud): daily
To external drive: daily if possible

Registry
Weekly

Drivers
Not so important: backup when you install new hardware

Thunderbird
Weekly

Firefox and Chrome settings
Weekly

Full FABs backup
Weekly

Well I hope that gives you some ideas for a backup routine.  Thankfully, I haven’t had to restore anything yet but that will be the ultimate test of any backup routine. Can you suggest any improvements from your experience? Drop a comment below.