August 30, 2010
Dropbox and TrueCrypt: Sync your data securely
If you haven’t heard of Dropbox, it’s a cloud based file syncing service. You get 2GB of storage for free that you can use as you want. You simply install the Dropbox client on your computer and drop some files into the Dropbox folder, which by default is located under My Documents in Windows but you can specify a different location if you wish. In the background those files will sync up to your online Dropbox storage. It gets even better! Install the Dropbox client on multiple computers and now those same files will be in sync on all computers as well as your online Dropbox storage. Not only do you have easy and convenient access to your files from any computer (or mobile device like iPhone, Droid, etc.) but you also have multiple backup copies on each computer you installed the client on. Plus, if you make changes to files Dropbox has file versioning. Simple right-click a file and choose Dropbox | View Previous Versions. You will then be taken to your account via web browser where you can then select which version of the file you want restored. Want more space than the 2GB you get for free? You can add 250MB for each person you refer to Dropbox (assuming they sign up) for a maximum of 8GB. They offer pay options for more space as well. Dropbox isn’t likely going to be a total online (cloud) backup solution unless you don’t have a ton of data, but the sync convenience makes it easy to have universal access to your most commonly used files.
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