My only complaint is that LocatePC is never
absolutely sure that something has changed.
In my testing, I've determined that my home
router has a tendency to blink offline for a
minute every so often. When it does, as soon
as the Wi-Fi interface comes back up, Windows
thinks it has a new connection (even though
the IP address is the same) and LocatePC
sends me an alert message. I get a few of these
per day. My simple solution to this annoyance
was to create a custom mailbox on my mail
server for all my LocatePC notices from all my PCs and laptops. Hopefully, I'll never need
to look through all that information to try to
recover a stolen system. However, if misfortune
strikes, I'll have a good chance of discovering
the computer's location when it comes back
online and LocatePC emails me.
SyncBack
For years, I'd been looking for a reliable file-synchronization utility to help me perform
automated backups of my data across my network. After all, who needs tape or CD backups
if disk space is so cheap that you can simply
have one system back up to another? I've tried
a number of solutions over the years—from
open-source to commercial—but SyncBack is
the only solution I've stuck with.
SyncBack helps you easily back up (or
synchronize) files to another location on the
same drive, a different drive, a different storage medium (e.g., CD-RW, CompactFlash,
USB thumb-drive), an FTP server, a network
share, or a Zip archive. Unlike other utilities
in this space that try to accomplish too much,
SyncBack really nails its interface—which Figure 7 shows—with an approach that's simple
enough to follow but doesn't skimp on features
or configuration options.
I use this tool for daily, weekly, and monthly
backups on my home network. By setting up
three target directories on a removable 300GB
USB 2.0 drive and using SyncBack's built-in
scheduling capabilities (which populate the
appropriate commands into the Windows
scheduler service), I've created three backup
profiles: one to run nightly at 5 p.m., one to run
weekly at 3 a.m., and one to run on the first day
of every month at 1 a.m.. I've selected a backup profile and instructed SyncBack to delete any
files in the destination that aren't in the source. Now, I rest easy at night knowing that my data
is backed up every single evening. These backups have saved me on more than one occasion
when I've accidentally wiped out development
code. By simply going to my always-up-to-date
backups, I'm ready to go again. For absolutely
critical files, I also have an offsite backup profile
that delivers my files to an FTP server on the
other side of the country.
SyncBack also supports a sync profile (i.e.,
changes on both sides are replicated to each
other), as well as the use of direct UNC path
names. The tool also supports the use of FTP
servers as destinations. SyncBack can ensure
that certain applications are closed before running its profiles and can email you the results
of each profile it runs—or email you only when
an error occurs while executing a profile.
If you have file synchronization needs on
your network that you haven't figured out a
workable solution for, I would suggest you take
a look at SyncBack and see if it will meet your
needs. The amount of functionality available
in the freeware version is impressive, and its
execution is rock solid.
Expand Your Toolkit
I hope some of the utilities I've described can
help you reduce the number of hours you
spend every day on inventory/monitoring
and security tasks. For one more fantastic utility—which didn't fit into this article's categories—check out the "Screencasting with Wink"
sidebar. Download all these tools and give
them a try! In the meantime, I'll be keeping my
eye out for more great free utilities. Check back
next fall for a new batch.