Playing It Safe With Laptops
April 23rd, 2008Having switched from a desktop to a notebook as my primary computing device (not considering the PS3), being conscious about the added vulnerability of personal data is now imperative. It would be terrible if the laptop was lost or stolen, of course, but there is now the more probable risk of accidentally damaging the portable machine (not that I am sloppy, but it is reassuring to know that I am protected from hard drive damage due to dropping the laptop, or from accidentally yanking it off the coffee table).
Some habits are really worth adopting in order to minimize the pain of going through data loss and/or recovery - even more so in the case of theft (fact: about 97% of stolen computers are never recovered). There are scores of data recovery services available, but they generally seem to take advantage of the customers’ cornered situations and charge a heavy premium for fetching data from a damaged laptop (often more than the cost of a new computer). Of course, there are some pre-emptive solutions available such as PCPhoneHome or LaptopLocate.net, which can help track down machines by monitoring their location. With the iAlertU freeware application, you can even add “car alarm” or security camera protection for an iSight-equipped Apple notebook.
The first and most vital thing to do for any computer user, is to use a backup storage device. The simplest form of this would be to connect an external hard drive. Hard drives with encryption features allow locking down of personal information as all data stored on the drive is inaccessible without a master password. While it is possible to back up data on optical media like DVDs, this is a cumbersome repetitive chore and requires a lot of sorting and organization for the backed up information to be easily accessible.
External drives can play well with automated backup software, thus making what would otherwise be a daily chore an invisible background task for the computer. My external hard drive is network-attached, which eliminates the need to constantly plug it into a laptop, and additionally allows moving all media files to the external drive so they are accessible from all shared computers on the home network. On the flip side, this does have the disadvantage of not being able to access your media outside the home (unless you open up the drive for internet access).
I often find myself minimizing the kind of personal data that is stored on the notebook’s hard drive. I typically use my Gmail account as a network archive as this makes my files retrievable from any computer with an internet connection (more on how to make this process more convenient in a future tutorial). This benefits both security and accessibility, and prevents losing years of data and pictures along with the laptop. There are new web services cropping up now, that recognize this activity and endeavor to help organize data tucked away in your email attachments. Xoopit is one such service that ties in with a Gmail account.
What is your favorite strategy?
