Be sure to Back-Up:
Your Bookmarks, Desktop, Documents, iTunes, iPhotos, movies, addressbook and contacts, or any other application specific data.
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Suggested Back Up Drives:
~ 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive
~ 320 GB Portable External Hard Drive

Just been re-imaged? Setup Videos:
~ Setup AddressBook?
~ Setup new Mail?


Contact Help Desk
helpdesk@ross.org
(631) 907.5200

Ross Help Desk

It's Time to Back Up Your Laptop (Before They're Wiped Clean!)
It's getting close, the annual laptop roundup where students turn in their laptops to get a slew of much needed updates and patches to keep them working properly. During this time each laptop is "re-imaged" returning it to a "like new" software state meaning that all personal information that is not backed up will be lost. Beat the mad rush to find disks and space and start backing up now. When backing up, you have 4 main options depending on how much and what stuff you are trying to save. Read below for more information.

When backing up, you have 4 main options depending on how much and what stuff you are trying to save.

1. Back up school work to the Ross servers.
With the exception of students with large video based projects, most students can back up all of their school work to the Ross School servers. Students have been given instruction on how to do this but some forget so we have posted detailed instructions this year here.

Remember: Music files (ie: itunes) and movies that are not school work can be removed by the Help Desk without notice so be careful and use the space wisely.

Pros: Free, Easy and great for backing up School Work
Cons: You CAN NOT back up your personal iTunes (worth $$$)

2. Burn your files to CD-R disks (or DVD for some grades)
CD-R's which can be bought anywhere from the grocery store to Radio Shack and hold 650-700Megabytes. If you are thinking of backing up your music to CD's make sure you save the files in the Apple .mp4 format and not as a straight music CD. You will be able to get well over a hundred songs on a disk in mp4 format and probably only about 12 in standard CD audio format. 700Mb CD-R disks for $17 (per 50)

(If you are in the Class of 2015, 2016, 2011 or 2012, you are in luck and can use DVD-R disks to burn backups that hold about 4.5Gigabytes per disk, that is 3,800 more Megabytes than a CD-R disk)

Pros: Fairly inexpensive
Cons: The disks can only be burned once and it can take a lot of time backing up to CD-R's.

 

 

 

 

 


3. Store your files online.
Find an online storage solution such as Apple's MobileMe iDisk or Mozy.com that offer web-based backup. (MobileMe is $99/year and Mozy is free up to 2Gigabytes).

Pros: Can be accessed from any computer and no disks or drives to loose.
Cons: Can be slow to access and backup.

4. Use a external back up drive (good for big files).
This can be somewhat expensive but in the end might be the best solution for some users with big music & movie collections. Many USB 2.0 hard drive are not "portable" and can be used but many don't travel well and are more prone to crashing. Iomega makes a fairly durable 320 GB Portable External Hard Drive for around $90. This still has moving parts and isn't indestructible but it is a lot of fast storage. Another smaller yet more durable option would be to get a USB flash drive (no moving parts) which you can find here (16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive) for about $35.

Pros: More storage and faster than the other options
Cons: Cost and mechanical drives sometimes fail.

**The main thing to remember is that any backup takes time and some careful thought on the part of the user. So make sure you get your stuff backed up, your laptop will come back to with a new "like new" image but there won't be a trace of your old files.