• GTDTiddlyWiki
  • This is a neat tool. A wiki is a tool that people use to collaborate on projects or ideas. This one is handy as it uses the Getting Things Done action management system. It’s handy for organizing your chores, projects, life, etc.
    
• ClamWinPortable
  • It’s a free virus scanner.
• xmplay
  • A really lightweight MP3 player.
    
• 7-zip
  • It’s a freeware winzip replacement.
    
• AutoHotkey
  • It’s a scripting tool for windows. Handy for handling monotonous tasks.
    
• Contig
  • It’s a file defragmenter. You know how you can defrag entire hard drives? Well this will defrag just one file. It’s a windows command line tool. Useful when you’re having problems burning an ISO.
• cpu-z
  • This is a tool that analyzes your windows hardware configuration. It will tell you what motherboard you have, what firmware it’s loaded on, what speed your memory is running on. And you don’t have to install it. Very useful.
    
• jdiskreport
  • It analyzes your disk utilization. Handy for finding out where your hard drive space is going to. Remember kids, any hard drive filled more than 80% full will take forever to defragment.
    
• Kar Kare
  • A palm program that keeps a record of my vehicle maintenance. It also keeps track of your gas mileage and then reminds you when new maintenance is due. Very useful, dirt cheap, and the programmer is really nice. He’s shipped me the executable like 4 times when I’ve lost it. Hence the reason I now carry it on my palm and also on my thumbdrive.
    
• Portaputty
  • When accessing systems remotely you need to do it securely so crooks don’t steal your data. Putty is a free version of SSH that lets you get onto boxes and do work remotely. Remember kids, telnet is bad. It’s so bad that it would rape your grandma if it only had legs.
    
• UnxUtils.zip
  • Cygwin is awesome. But you have to install it, so it’s not very portable. UnxUtils offers many of the command line tools you’re used to in unix but they’re compiled for windows.
    
• QuickPar
  • Par files are used to ensure you actually got the information that was intended to be sent to you. They can also be used to rebuild files that are damaged if you have enough of them. This is a free solution for that. Useful for newsgroup lovers.
    
• ImgBurn
  • Useful for burning ISOs.
    
• TightVNC
  • Useful for securely, remotely, accessing GUIs.
    
• PortableApps
  • An office replacement. Not as powerful, but free and portable.
• pscp/psftp
  • A part of the putty suite. It’s a free secure copy binary. Let’s you securely copy files from one machine to another via a network.
• cwRsync
  • Remote sync is used to compare data from two different locations. You can set it up to pull data from one place to another or use it for backups or all kinds of stuff.
    
• Documents
  Some scripts I’ve worked on – because reusing code is smart.
  Some PDFs
  
• A little music
  • Because lifes too short to not rock.

Thanks,

Daniel J. Doughty

Here’s the particular thumbdrive I’m using at the moment. By putting it on my keychain, I don’t end up leaving it in my pants. Which is handy, because I’ve nuked a few by washing and drying them. They’re ok the first few times you do that, but after a while they croak.

So the first thing to figure out is what’s the really important stuff. I googled around a bit to see what others thought was worthy of backing up. It seems like this is the sort of stuff people worry about the most:

1. original content I created
2. pictures
3. financial documents
4. system configuration files
5. saved games
6. system drivers(or I would if I could figure out a way to do it from the command line)
7. registry AKA System State
8. system keys/licenses
9. bookmarks from browsers
10. scripts

Things I’m NOT backing up:

• my .pst file. I only use Outlook at work and I have a different backup solution there.
• my calendar or address book. Those are again generally work related and the data is backed up via syncing to my Palm and another backup solution.

Then it’s time to set up a mediamax account at http://www.mediamax.com. Answer their confirmation email. And also use a command line interface to log into the FTP interface and create your backup directory. Basically that comes down to the following:

Start->Run->cmd->ftp ftp.mediamax.com -> username->password->mkdir backup->quit

Then it’s time to set up your backup scripts. I based mine off of the efforts of Adam Pash and BostonMark ala http://lifehacker.com/software/version-control/hack-attack-simple-version-control-170164.php. You can find my versions at http://danieljdoughty.com/version-control-with-ftp-backup.0.2.bat and http://danieljdoughty.com/ftp-backup.ftp. You may have to right click and select save as. I set up these files in the c:\scripts folder. If you want to put them there, you’ll probably have to create the directory. If you choose another location, you will have to adjust the batch script to compensate for the new location of the scripts directory.

You’ll need to modify these files. Modify the version control script with textpad and alter the section that is to be downloaded, AKA %HOMEPATH%\My Documents\Simple Version Control. And you’ll need to set your own username and password in the ftp-backup.ftp configuration file.

If you want to backup your IE bookmarks I advise you to use autohotkey, http://lifehacker.com/software/software/download-of-the-day-autohotkey-118270.php. Then you want to download my autohotkey used to get IE bookmarks, http://danieljdoughty.com/getIEBookmarks.ahk

CAVEAT: I’m an avid Firefox user and IETab user. Don’t bash on me backing up IE stuff. I work with developers who are instructed to code only to IE. It’s easier to use IE for these internal web pages than to argue with every developer in the department about how Firefox is different. I’m usually having a hard enough time convincing them that there’s a problem with the app.

Now run a test run. It’s best to do that from a command window as you will be able to scroll back and see if there is a problem somewhere in the processing. If it looks good, then log into mediamax. Under the File Manager section you will see a folder titled Uploaded File. Expand it out and you will see your backup files.

Finally schedule that backup in your windows scheduled tasks ala http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/hack-attack-using-windows-scheduled-tasks-153089.php and you’ve got a backup set up for some of your most important stuff.

CAVEAT: I’ve heard awful reviews of mediamax’s customer service. So you may want to choose another webhost for this sort of thing. Since I’m not paying for their service, nor do I intend to use more than 1GB ever, I don’t think I’ll worry about it too much.

THINGS LEFT TO DO: I should add some code to delete the original backup folders and not delete the zipped file and also to add some limits. For instance, only keep local copies of the backups for so long. Also to delete remote copies after some time. Maybe tomorrow.

Also need this thing to clean up after itself.