The sign of a hard-working law student

Checked my LLM folder on my computer today, you know, just for the hell of it.

Was surprised to see it had reached the mammoth size of 283MB and had 862 files with 66 folders. Wow. And I’ve still revision work and the full fury of my dissertation to be thrown at it yet.

The fact the folder houses 862 files doesn’t really surprise me. The size is certainly an eye-opener and is due in large part to all of the journal articles I’ve used for assignments that I’ve downloaded in PDF format. The downside of open standards I guess!

While on this topic, I thought I might share my back-up and syncing strategy with the blawgosphere. Law students, in my experience, tend to be lousy at backing-up, but with the wide range of free automated backup and syncing tools available today, there really isn’t an excuse any longer.

My precious LLM folder is backed up (and synced) to a USB key using Microsoft Synctoy 2.0. Creating a folder pairing between the folder on my PC and the USB key means that syncing is just a one-button-click job – just as it should be. You could even automate the process via Task Scheduler in Windows. My LLM folder is also backed up (and synced again) to the cloud and a laptop using the fantastic Microsoft Live Mesh, though I guess MS haters out there can make use of services like Dropbox instead which works well across Windows, Mac and Linux. Technically, Live Mesh is still in Beta but I’ve been using it for virtually a whole year and have had no problems with it. Overall, I’ve found this happy back-up and syncing arrangement to serve my needs well for the past year or so.

I also perform random backups to external hard disks and the web. I’ve been a user of BT digital vault (their free service, that is) for a couple of years or so and find it adequate. I’ve used a variety of web-based back up services over the past few years (a few which have since disappeared from cyberspace) but with Live Mesh and BT’s digital vault, plus my variety of on-site backups, I think I’m reasonably well prepared. Still, there’s room for improvement, I guess: I might add a Networked Attached Storage (NAS) solution or a Home Server to my computing arsenal. After all, it’s the type of thing you can’t have too much of - when it comes to backups, more really is more.