Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Heads-Up on Windows 8.1 with SkyDrive

Hi FoLCs!

Since I just got bitten, I figured I send out a warning. Up to Windows 8, you could use a normal local user account for signing in to Windows and still get SkyDrive to sync your files. With Windows 8.1, you are required to use a Microsoft Account for signing in to Windows itself if you want to keep using SkyDrive as a handy online backup tool.

For me, that's a no-no, so I'm shopping around for alternative solutions to backup my LnC fic to...

Michael

Another sign of the coming Microsoft Apocalypse. I hope other than that you're enjoying your new monitor / computer.

I find Dropbox to be pretty good for synching documents between my main PC, laptop, and iPad. The free version gives you 2gb of file space, 500mb more if your refer other people who subsequently sign up to use the service, to a maximum of 18gb. If you need more than that there's a paid version.

I agree with Marcus-- dropbox is pretty darn good. There's a lot of different ways to deal with this but number one, ALWAYS, is the external HD. They're getting cheaper now too. Just don't consistently transfer them between macs and pc's (I just killed my terabyte recently because of this, but recovered most of it finally).

If you want online backup, just for files and stuff, I've found that I'm growing to appreciate Google Drive. You get 15GB of free space, plus if you ever want to share, it's easy for editing. Also, you can download and save them into many different formats. Personally, for starting free backup, I recommend AVG. For about 90% of the time (especially as an antivirus!). Honestly, there's tons of options. Google Drive is simple and free and technically you can set up as many accounts as you want and therefore add up your backup space. For instance, I have one email specifically for fanfic, and one for business plus an old one that I lost that actually was a group account for school. I just keep my stuff that I want backed up on each separate drive. Even some of the longest fics are only a couple hundred KB. You should be okay for a while.

Hope this helps.

Hi guys!

Thanks for the thoughts. I think Google Drive updated its free plan quite a bit since the last time I check 1-2 years ago. Maybe it will be Google instead of Dropbox after all. Will need to do some more research on the pros and cons of the desktop integration software of the two

Michael

The school district I work for uses Google Drive for pretty much everything. It seems to work.

Wow, you guys are light years ahead of me, since I have really *no* idea what any of those things are. If I need to transfer stuff from my desktop to my laptop (or want to back up stuff; and don't want to transfer items one at a time to my terabyte drive ), I just email it as an attachment from my personal email account to my LnC email account, and vice versa. (It's much easier than trying to keep track of those tiny USB drives.) Then I delete the old emails when I send a new one. Anyone who hacks my emails probably deserves the punishment of reading my stories. Plus, it gives those guys at the NIA, or was it NSA?, something more interesting to read than the run of the ol' emails, when they want to know why I'm doing internet research on nuclear bombs, radiation poisoning, drawing and quartering, and other such stuff.

/just thought you'd like to know what us yokels use/

I often wondered if I've been flagged on some department's list for all of the crazy things I look up-- my policy is that nothing is un-google-able. I might have looked up schematics for a WMD, or what poisons are untraceable, but as hard as they want to look, the only evidence of one they'll ever find is in the land of fanfiction that resides on my hard drive.

Edit: Then again, I figure if they really had any clue of what I've been researching all this time, they'd be knocking on my door by now. Which means they really don't got much of anything. Which means there's a lot worse people out there easily getting away with it, so I shouldn't be too high up on their watch list. Plus, you'd think they'd assume that anyone seriously crazy enough to do something drastic like that would go to a little more effort to hide it. I think we writers are safe. /whew/

Funny--the research needed for fanfiction does probably make an interesting search list!

I would be a yokel then, also--I don't know much about transfering anything btw devices--and doing it over e-mail is the only method I've mastered so far

Ooooh! I was doing the same thing when I started with fanfic. Well, connected my gmail to my e-mail program and drag'n'dropped the files in the inbox. Worked okay, just started to get tedious...

Anyway, the idea is that you register with Microsoft or Google or Dropbox and get online storage for free (well, you're the product, but that's something Lois should be familiar with, by now). Then you download their desktop program and it sets up a folder on your local disk drive that gets automatically synced to the cloud and down again to any connected computer.

Michael

Sounds like the beginning of SkyNet taking over the world. On the other hand, if it means naked buff guys drop out of the sky, that doesn't sound like too bad of a future. At least, we have Superman to protect us, right?

Yes, everything I know about complex computer systems I learned from TV and the movies. Why do you ask?

<<From Jurassic Park, I learned that Linux isn't a Cyber Cat for your desktop, which purrs when you've got mail, but some kind of program really smart people who clone dinosaurs use. >>

I've worked with pen drives and email that way but sooner or later I'd always lose track of the latest version of files or something.

Dropbox (and the other similar ones such as iCloud and Googgle's thing) are basically like a directory that is mirrored across several computers. If you edit a file and save it in that directory, it's automatically updated on all of the other computers the next time they're on line. So you don't risk losing the file completely if you lose a memory stick or something, and it should always be the latest version you're working on. You can also access the files via their web site if you have to use someone else's computer, or share them on-line if you put them into a special public area.

It isn't perfect - there can be problems if e.g. the same file is open on more than one computer and it works best for smaller files - but it's a big plus if you use multiple computers.

But only use them to keep copies. The free services (and most of the paid) policy is if they lose a irreplaceable file too bad, not their problem. Actually almost always if they lose anything they lose everything you have there.