Backing Up Important Photos - A Step-by-Step Guide

This is a post by guest blogger SeanPaul Keanini, Online Sales Representative at NovaStor   We all know it can be a bit overwhelming selecting the pictures worth keeping on your digital camera. If you take holiday, birthday or special event photos like I do, you probably have over 300+ snap shots to go through. Many of these photos are priceless and making sure I have them backed up and safely secured is crucial. With several years experience working with data backup solutions, I know not to rely on just one backup method for files that are important to me. I choose to fully safeguard my files and photos by backing up in more than one location. Since Autumn is just around the corner, along with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, there's bound to be many upcoming photo opportunities.  To make sure your photos stay safe and sound, I’d like to share the “best practices” strategy I use to save my precious photos and videos.

Onsite and Offsite Backup is Crucial, But Think Twice About Popular Cloud Services

We all know that unplanned disasters can strike at any time.  It's common knowledge that local and offsite backups are both needed to ensure business continuity, thus NovaStor urges its users to use backup software that integrates both options.  But...even more important, we ask users to think twice about mainstream public cloud services and instead, look into backup services offered by Managed Service Providers.

After a lightning bolt struck a utility pole in Dublin, Ireland, power supply was cut to several businesses and data centers in the surrounding area.   According to Amazon and Microsoft – the two companies whose data centers were worst affected— the bolt disrupted power supply to their massive data centers.  While Microsoft was able to kick start its services after a few hours, Amazon’s services weren’t resumed until a good 48 hours later. Amazon’s customers spent several frustrating hours waiting for Amazon to report on the status, as the company struggled to set things right and quickly restore their services.

With this in mind, NovaStor believes there are several lessons to be learned from this event.

10 Tips Learned Exhibiting at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

Ahhh yes, the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference…the conference Microsoft fans, lovers, partners, and computer techies live for.  This year, nearly 15,000 people representing 640,000 partner organizations attended, and more than 200 Certified Partners exhibited, including yours truly, NovaStor.

This year was NovaStor’s very first year exhibiting at the WPC.   Inspired by Channel Insider’s list titled, “10 Things Learned From the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference,” which focused on things learned from an attending standpoint, we’ve made our own list which focuses on the things learned from an exhibitor standpoint.
                                                                                      Enjoy. 

Meet NovaStor at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

From July 10^th to July 14^th, data protection specialist NovaStor will exhibit at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles.

Data protection specialist NovaStor will exhibit its full line of data protection products and new cloud platforms at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference held July 10-14 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles.  NovaStor will be exhibiting at booth #926 and will also be available for one-on-one meetings on innovative cloud strategies for Microsoft partners.

NovaStor Launches Private Cloud Software for Enterprises

NovaBACKUP Remote Workforce 12.1 reduces administrative effort, ensures global data availability, and backs up and restores data in the cloud 30 times faster than previous versions.  Now optimized for large data volumes and equipped with Exchange 2010 support.

NovaStor, a pioneer in data protection, announced this week the availability of version 12.1 of NovaBACKUP Remote Workforce. The new private cloud platform now protects and restores distributed company data over the Internet much more efficiently, simplifies the central management process, and restores single mailboxes through the support of Microsoft Exchange 2010.

If Only Sony Had Upped Its Security

As large of a corporation as Sony is, one would imagine that a significant amount of money was invested in the security and privacy protection of its data, but after a massive data breach, the company had to learn the hard way.

Sony announced on April 26 that a breach of its PlayStation Network compromised millions of customers’ personal information, including names, partial email addresses and account information.  One week later, the company announced its Sony Online Entertainment unit had been hacked as well and that credit card data had been stolen from its servers.  Two breaches in one week...talk about a mess!

Backup and Security For Your Mobile Device

We’ve stressed the importance of backing up your computer data, but what about the data on your cell phone?

Nowadays, the majority of cell phone users have a smartphone i.e. an iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone.  The massive amount of personal data on a cell phone is endless.  We keep our calendars, contacts, photos, text messages and more all on our precious mobile devices!

Every day, our cell phones are subjected to beatings, bruisings, drownings and possible losses, so why risk losing the data stored on our phones?  Just as necessary as it is to back up your computer, you mustn’t also forget about protecting your cell phone!

Because we know that your cell phone is the epitome of your most-referred to data, we’ve compiled a list of smartphone backup options, all of which are FREE!

The Top 3 Things You Should Regularly Back Up

Here at NovaStor, we advise that backing up your entire computer is the best policy….

But we do know that some people prefer to pick and choose what they want to backup.  We also know that some people prefer to backup only the bare minimum, so if you’re going to picky about what you backup or languid about how much you backup, then we suggest you focus on at least these three things.

Iron Mountain Dropping From the Cloud?

Iron Mountain has reevaluated its cloud architecture and plans to focus more on its core goal: Paper Document Archive and Digital Tape Storage Services.

In a press release sent out last week, data management service provider, Iron Mountain confirmed plans of possibly shutting down its online backup and recovery business to focus on traditional document and tape storage services.  This news comes shortly after appointing a new CEO.  Whether or not the decision was made solely by the new CEO himself, the company stands by this decision. 

"We've got good margins,” said Iron Mountain’s newly appointed CEO, Richard Reese. “The problem is, we eat them all up in the redevelopment costs.  We were not successful at building an efficient development shop…It just cost us too much to continue to develop and redevelop our own technology."

Google Goes Above and Beyond to Make Sure Data is Fully Protected

In a recent video released last week by Google via their GoogleApps You Tube channel, viewers are given a tour of one of Google’s massive data centers in Hamina, Finland.  The video highlights the security measures in place at their data centers, as well as the overall protection of stored data.  It even shows their process of destructing old hard drives to prevent leakage of customer data, by shredding and crushing these drives with a large, steam-roller-like machine, called “The Crusher.”