Everyone needs backup. Hard drives fail. Period. So backup your data.

The problem is that your data is hiding in a bunch of different places on your hard drive. One of the best ways to make backup easier is to centralize it. Pick a folder where you want to store all the data you want to back up, and centralize it to make your life easier.

I use a folder named “sjg,” my initials. In there I have my “My Documents” folder My business files are in there (My Documents\Business Files), as are my Time Matters documents (Business Files\TM7) and my Outlook .pst files (Business Files\Outlook Files). You can change all these settings in the relevant programs. Here’s how:

• My Documents - Just right-click the folder and select “Properties,” then click the “Move” button and select the directory you want to use
• Outlook - Go to File > Data File Management. This will tell you where all your data files are located. Click “Open Folder” for each of them. Leave those folders open and close Outlook. Now copy each file into the folder where you want to centralize your data. Open Outlook again and go back to File > Data File Management. Use the “Add” button to add each of the files you moved. Then delete the old ones. This is difficult if you are moving an IMAP file. I am still working on that one.
• IE favorites - If you are still using Internet Explorer (dear God, why?), you can change the location of your Favorites folder, but not simply. Go to Start > Run, and type “regedit.” Then hit “Okay.” Navigate to

  HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

  In the right pane, right click Favorites > Modify, and change the path to the folder where you want to store your IE favorites.

• Firefox bookmarks - The easiest way to backup your Firefox bookmarks is to use the Foxmarks add-on. This has the added advantage of allowing you to keep your Firefox bookmarks synchronized between multiple computers, including portable Firefox on a USB drive.
• Time Matters - It is best to do this when installing Time Matters. Once you are up and running, though, it isn’t difficult to change. Go to File > Utilities > File Locations. Click on the “change record” button for the file that appears in the window. Note the current locations, which is probably c:\TMx\Data (where x is your Time Matters version). Copy the \Data directory to the location where you want to store your TM data, and go back to TM and change those locations to reflect the new location.

I think that covers the main things. You should be able to apply this to other programs, as well. It is easier because you just have to backup the one folder now, rather than navigating around to find all the files and folders you need to backup. You may want to subtract your music and/or videos, however, since they will really slow down your backup.

Even better, use a separate partition instead of just a separate folder. That way you can even just create a disk image of your data partition once in a while to make restoration even easier.

Now go forth and backup!

Not using Firefox yet? Get it. It is better than Internet Explorer just for the add-ons, if for no other reason. Lifehacker winnowed a long, long list down to its top 10 Firefox add-ons. The winners:

10. AutoCopy (clipboard helper)
9. CustomizeGoogle
8. Firebug (web development helper)
7. FireFTP (FTP client)
6. Greasemonkey (site-specific script manager)
5. ScrapBook (web clippings library)
4. Tab Mix Plus (tab manager)
3. DownThemAll! (download manager)
2. Adblock (advertisement blocker)
1. Foxmarks (bookmarks synchronizer)

Now excuse me while I go and get the add-ons I don’t already have!

If, like me, you do any serious amount of writing in text boxes online (including webmail, blog commenting, etc.), Textarea Backup is a pretty useful Greasemonkey script for Firefox. It backs up your text area every ten keystrokes, ten seconds, and whenever the text area loses focus. You’ll need Greasemonkey to run it, and then you can install the Textarea Backup script.

[via Lifehacker]

Lifehacker links to blogger Matt Cutts, whose guide to using Greasemonkey persistent searches opens up a world of possibilities for Gmail organization. In particular, you could use persistent searches to keep a running tally of all e-mails related to a case by tailoring your search to the names, e-mail addresses, and likely subject lines involved.

Now if Google would only allow me to use Gmail on my own server so I didn’t have to worry about security and backups, this would be a fantastic platform-independent solution to e-mail.

Today I spent two hours drafting a complaint. Tonight, I was getting the complaint ready to go, so I copied my summons form into the complaint document and saved the file without thinking about it. As my finger clicked the mouse button, I realized I had selected “Save,” not “Save as.” Oh shit.

Yes, that’s two hours down the drain. I back up my files every morning to an external drive, but I drafted the complaint this afternoon. I also have an online backup service, Carbonite. Carbonite is great and all, but it also has a tendency to go into “Recover Mode” (i.e., it stops backing up) whenever I put my system in standby, which I did shortly after I finished drafting the complaint. So no backup.

So now I am stuck re-writing my complaint from scratch, and I am extremely angry with myself. Tonight I will probably send an angry note to the makers of Carbonite asking them to (1) give me an option to accelerate the upload, as it is almost too slow to be useful sometimes, and (2) more importantly, to fix the stupid glitch that makes it go into Recover Mode when I put my laptop on standby.

And then, tomorrow morning, I will set up my backups to happen automatically in the morning and in the evening, so that I always have two options. In the meantime, I will painstakingly attempt to reconstruct my complaint while cursing intermittently.

I love Firefox, but since it behaves wonky when I am using my second monitor and UltraMon, I have been using Internet Explorer 7, instead. Today I just noticed a little arrow in the bookmarks pull-down menu (see pic). If you click the arrow instead of the bookmark title, the bookmark opens in a new tab rather than the current tab. It’s a bit faster and easier than right-clicking and selecting that option, as you must do in Firefox.

The Official Google Blog says a bit about robots.txt, the file on your server that tells search engines how to access your site, what to index, and much more. From the OGB:

However, you may have a few pages on your site you don’t want in Google’s index. For example, you might have a directory that contains internal logs, or you may have news articles that require payment to access. You can exclude pages from Google’s crawler by creating a text file called robots.txt and placing it in the root directory. The robots.txt file contains a list of the pages that search engines shouldn’t access. Creating a robots.txt is straightforward and it allows you a sophisticated level of control over how search engines can access your web site.

The OGB article starts on a detailed instructional guide to robots.txt, with more to come. [via Lifehacker]

I tried to post a question to the CIC Solutions Forum, but apparently my request for tips to speed up Time Matters was objectionable:

Your post was deleted by Matt Stone.

Subject: Speeding up Time Matters?

Reason: Thank you for contributing to the CIC Solutions Forums. Your message was rejected by the list moderator because its content is seen as editorializing, broad qualitative comment, a customer complaint, or lobbying for particular features or improvements.

I didn’t think I was editorializing to say that Time Matters was slow. It is. I have talked about Time Matters with many people, and every single time TM’s slowness was mentioned quickly. I just wanted some tips on how to minimize the slowness.

Let me be clear: I think Time Matters is far from perfect. In addition to being slow, it crashes frequently. Although I am a efficiency nut, I still use it. Why? Because with all its flaws, TM is still a time saver. But if there is a way I can streamline or speed up the program, I want to know about it.

So how about it? Do any of you have tips for speeding up Time Matters?

2008.07.16: Since this post is so popular, I want to point out that I ditched Time Matters about a year ago, and am much happier—and more productive—as a result.

If you are already using Windows Vista (and you shouldn’t be, because your law practice is too important to subject to Microsoft’s risky first-run releases–wait for SP1, at least), you’ll have noticed it moonlights as an overbearing nanny, second-guessing your every decision. From Lifehacker, here’s how to de-nag Vista.

On the other hand, if you are already using Vista, the forum would be a fantastic place to talk about your experiences with it.

Mousing gives you carpal tunnel syndrome, anyway. Keyboard shortcuts are of the Path [Lifehacker]. Although the new Office 2007 toolbar looks like a shiny cartoon vomited on Outlook 2003, it seems Microsoft got keyboard shortcuts right. Hit Alt, and every keyboard shortcut shows up next to the function it triggers.

Forget stop > reach > point > click. Mash a couple of keys and be on your way.