Photo of my 2TB Passport backing up 29GB of business intelligence.
ALTHOUGH MY LAPTOPS have become more capable of backing up my life, I still manually synchronise my SSD's core data by simply dragging and dropping one folder. However, several electronic processes are ticking away in the background, ensuring me against forgetfulness, fire and water damage.
During the Christmas break, I watched a nearby home fill with water as the River Suir burst its banks. When the water started lapping above the home's windowsills, I thought of what would have happened to the terabytes of data stored under two beds in our home.
For a little over a year, I've synced some of my work directly onto Microsoft OneDrive. I have a personal account and an educational account arranged through the Limerick Institute of Technology. I can see legacy work and work in progress by tapping open folders on my laptop or viewing them directly on a mobile handset.
Some of my tech friends have issues with OneDrive sync, pointing out problems with key data that can arise when several people work on the same file at once. However, in my experience, if co-authoring happens with the online version of Word, Powerpoint or Excel, no sync issues arise.
I'm now testing OneNote for its sync capability. I've seen some version conflicts arise when more than 10 students simultaneously edit the same page. In those instances, error codes display on screens but when everyone closes the common OneNote, the server seems to reconcile all edit problems. I expect to have a very strong case study pointing to the strengths and weaknesses of OneNote and OneDrive. However, I haven't seen any reason to revert back to Google Drive or Dropbox. Plus, it feels like my workflow is smoother and that I'm iterating solutions faster.
** Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia and business students in the Limerick Institute of Technology.
