Offsite Online Backup that Supports External Hard Drives

Telling it like it is really. Short post. Carbonite doesn't support external hard drives. Mozy does. Google for Mozy promo codes and get 20% off of a one year subscription. ($45ish total).

With all the hype about Carbonite, and all of the celebrity (paid) endorsements you'd think they'd be top of the game...but no go. So Mozy has my business.

Lame, I know, but I was feeling really emotional at the time.

I bought a WD External Hard drive from Overstock - refurbished, but I'm frugal. My husband calls me cheap. Toe-MAE-toes....toe-MAW-toes.

I put EVERYTHING on this drive, all working files, graphics, you name it. I've been meaning to buy offsite backup for it, but haven't had a lot of luck finding something that supports external HDs. (see next post)

Yesterday I plug everything in, and my I:/ drive is just gone. When I plug it in, my system (Vista...of course) won't recognize it, it has no drivers, there are no drivers to be downloaded to make it work. I'm stuck. So I Google.

I went through several different troubleshootings posts along with their owners, and they all said the same thing. I don't like digging through what didn't work for others, instead I just post what did work for me.

Check the plug. Check the cable. Light coming on? Sounds normal? If that's the case, try this:

- Control Panel
- Administrative Tools
- Computer Mgmt
- Disk Mgmt

See your hard drive there? If not...sorry, not your solution. If yes (you may see it twice - ignore that for now)...then YAY!

Right click & explore. Then go check out your "My Computer" to see if it's there.

That did it for me!

It's rare that I have something new and useful to say. Useful, yes, but new...not so much.

My husband got a new Blackberry and his software was better than mine. So I decided to upgrade my software from the BB site in a feelbe attempt to keep up with the Jones' (or my husband). I've never done this before, I've never really cared because I'm not one of those "must have my cell phone at all times" people -- in fact, I often lose it. But surely his can't be better than mine!

So I installed the desktop manager and plugged it in. (Go to your service provider to download the desktop manager for your BB) I have a Compaq Presario laptop, Windows Vista. Got everything up & rolling and it gets to the end of the installation and I get this error:

"Unable to reconnect to the device during a multi-stage load operation" -- and when I boot up the phone it gives me error #507 - in the language of Blackberry Pearl, that means there's no software installed.

So that was really nice. My $300 phone just became a child's toy. But like I tell my kids, we do not give up! :) Sometimes I do, but I don't tell them that. They can discover their parents are hypocrites in a few more years.

Anyway, I'm going through these BB forums only to learn that I'm up a creek minus paddle. I hardly think so.

So....if anyone else gets this error, I'll tell you what I did to fix it. And surely this won't work for everyone, but it will work for 24% of you. Give or take...

Before you begin, I pop the battery out of the Blackberry (that's not the fix, that's just part of what yo have to do). After that, I initiate the software on my PC. When it tries to find my Blackberry on a USB port, I notice that it doesn't recognize it. So, I unplug the USB cable and plug it back in. It recognizes it. Push button...commence.

After the software starts doing it's backup and load sequence, I put the battery back in. THIS was the key. For some reason the USB cable just wasn't providing enough juice to keep the Blackberry going.

Also, be sure your power options aren't set to turn off your USB ports. Probably not the problem but worth checking. Device Manager > USB Ports > Power Mgmt...you'll see the option.

Update Successful! So that did the trick, hopefully it helps someone else.

When I started doing web maintenance I charged by the hour. Quickly I realized that having three kids makes hourly charges impossible - for ME, not to mention that some jobs took me 5 minutes. So I now charge by the minute (with minimums...in case any of you were wondering).

At first I tried using a Wiki to keep track of minutes. No go.
Then I tried Project Pier. AWESOME program, I'll use it for big projects - not minute tracking.

I had to slowly extract myself from cyberland and head back to my roots. Pen and paper. Yeah, you heard me right. Pen. Paper.

In the sixth grade I won the penmanship award. Here's some trivia...in what year did they stop giving penmanship awards? 1985.

Needless to say, my fingers are so accustomed to my precious QWERTY that a pen feels foreign and my writing is nothing short of pathetic. Sometimes I forget how to finish off a letter and so I just draw a line. That must be what doctor's do - only they do it out of sheer lack of time whereas I do it out of sheer lack of neurological function.

Again I digress. If you charge by the hour and you have kids bothering you every four to six minutes, make a time log. I have 7 columns on mine:

1. Date
2. Client/Job
3. Start Time
4. End Time
5. Charge
6. Billed
7. Paid

In my start and end times boxes they generally look like this:

10:42 10:45
10:48: 10:57

...and so on. I always round up to the next minute on start times because that seems fair. Overall I do this because I'm fair, I couldn't stand it if someone thought I bilked them out of 14 cents.

ANYWAY, print a stack of these time log sheets on a clipboard. If you have several clients who you do small jobs for, give them their own sheet. I am NOT the queen of organization, I generally have tons of great ideas, very few do I implent. But this one? It has helped me immensely.

If you don't want to make your own, just download mine. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, but seriously, who doesn't have that??

Here's the link: http://www.affordable-site-design.com/downloads/time-log-sheets.pdf

Do your worst!