Backup and Recovery

JR is looking to get an external hard drive, but he really doesn't want to get one that uses USB. Leo says he could add a Firewire card or an external SATA (eSATA). There's also Network Attached Storage (NAS). Leo likes Synology's DiskStation and NetGear's ReadyNAS. NAS gives him data redundancy too, which is a plus.

Neil has Windows 8 and is using Storage Spaces with his SSD and hard drive. He's mirroring the data for backup, and is wondering if he still needs an external backup drive. Leo says no, he's already backing up that data with the mirroring option. He can get another backup if he wants, but he should be ok since he's also using Carbonite to backup off site.

(Disclaimer: Carbonite is a sponsor).

Leo says that it's too risky and not really worth it to dive into trying to get rid of duplicate data. Hard drives are so cheap and large, that it's better to just get another hard drive. Just consider the duplicates as another backup! There is a good search tool called X1 that can search his backups. Variety with backup is a good thing.

The chatroom says he can keep a catalog on his computer that has a database of what he has in offline storage. There are a few apps for this:

Larry is having trouble getting updates on Windows 7. He ran "Fixit" and it says the update database is corrupted. He tried a few other Microsoft solutions, but they haven't helped either. He's stuck and can't get new security updates.

TWiET host, Father Robert Ballecer (PadreSJ), says it's a common problem and could be a broken .NET issue. This article has a fix. There's also a cleanup tool he can download there.