BitTorrent Sync

If you’re looking to sync files between computers, BitTorrent Sync is a great free solution. Previously, I always recommended Dropbox, which is still a great service, especially because it is simple and it keeps a copy on the Dropbox servers, providing extra redundancy. But if you just want computer-to-computer sharing for a couple or many computers, BitTorrent Sync takes out the middleman. It’s fast, encrypted, private, and secure. It’s a great way to move very large files or to create a backup of your files on another computer. Dropbox is sometimes slow and has had security breaches.

BitTorrent Sync is still listed as experimental, but already is quite usable.

Crashplan Offsite Backups

We frequently have clients who come to us after their computers break or are infected with a virus. Usually we are able to recover the computer files. But sometimes we can’t and all is lost if they don’t have backups. It’s a heartbreaking but frequent occurrence.  And of course, some people lose their files due to theft or natural disaster.

That’s why we recommend offsite backups in addition to a local backup. There are many good services, but we use Crashplan which is free for a year for today at: https://www.crashplan.com/carboniteswitcher/