Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

Recently I posted about how to backup your ScanSnap profile settings if you are on the Mac. Here is how to do it on Windows.

The ScanSnap settings are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Application Data\PFU\ScanSnap.

Obviously, “yourusername” would be replaced with your Windows username.

If you can’t see the “Application Data” folder, go up to Tools | Folder Options and set it to be able to see hidden files and folders.

Each of those “PFUSsMon0000x” folders corresponds to one of your profiles, but I would recommend backing up the entire ScanSnap folder.

If you use a backup system like Mozy or Carbonite, make sure you add the ScanSnap folder to be backed up. Otherwise, just copy the folder somewhere.

In case you’re wondering what PFU is, that is a subsidiary of Fujitsu and it is them that developed the ScanSnap.

Hope this helps to protect your ScanSnap settings. Let us know if it does.

So you’ve finally disabled Quick Menu and you’ve gotten all your ScanSnap Manager Profiles set up. Now you want to make sure that you don’t lose it all.

This will be a two part post, first starting with the Mac. Windows will come soon.

I won’t get too technical, but your settings are stored in something called a Property List file (plist). What you want to do is back up that file and keep it somewhere safe.

Here is where it is:

• In Finder go to your Home directory
• Click on Library
• Click on Preferences
• Scroll down and you will see a bunch of files that start with jp.co.pfu.blah blah blah. The one you want is called jp.co.pfu.ScanSnap. V10L10.plist (that V10L10 might be different for you. Not sure what that signifies exactly)

If you want to see what is in it and you are in Leopard, highlight it and hit the space bar. Quick Look will open up.

Back up that file and you should have your settings saved if disaster strikes. It might even be good for migrating your ScanSnap settings to another machine, though I have not tried that yet.

Let me know if this trick does end up helping some day.

We all know that staying up to date with software is generally important, but sometimes it can have unexpected side effects.

Recently, a whole bunch of people started getting green checkmarks beside their document icons. For example, if you had a Word document, when you looked at it in Windows Explorer there would be a green checkmark on the icon.

Support forums flooded with questions- What is going on? Do I have a virus? How do I get rid of it? What is up with the green checkmarks?!

Well, it turns out that the culprit is one of our favorite backup utilities, Mozy.

An update was released that added a feature (annoying to some), where there is a red exclamation point beside the icon of a file if it needs to be backed up, which changes to a green checkmark once the operation is successful.

I can see the reason for doing this, but if you want to get rid of it, here is what you need to do:

• Click on the Mozy icon in the system tray (the lower right corner of your screen)
• Choose Configure
• Go to the Options tab
• Check “Disable icon overlays in Windows Explorer”
• Hit Save

There you go, check marks should be gone.

Dave Friend, the CEO of Carbonite, wrote a blog post the other day about his experience actually using his product.

According to a recently released survey by Compuware, most data loss is attributable to either user negligence or malice. Only 1% of data loss is due to hackers. I loved the headline on this story: “3/4 idiots, 1/4 bitterness.”

I have to confess to being part of the “idiot” crowd. Three weeks ago I left my laptop sitting on my seat when I got off the train in New York. I remembered it just in time to see my train, with laptop still aboard, disappearing down the track. Except for occasionally recovering individual files that I accidentally delete or overwrite, I haven’t actually had a PC disaster since starting Carbonite 3 years ago. So, aside from the pain of having to buy a new laptop, it was fun to use my own product to get everything back. I was really proud of how well it worked.

Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago. I was at the Vancouver airport and took the shuttle bus to the parking lot. I went up to the front of the bus to tell the driver where I was parked and chatted with him a bit. When we stopped, I jumped off and waved goodbye.

It was then that I realized that I had left my backpack with my MacBook Pro (aka my third child) and my car keys (!) on the bus. I turned around and started running back, but luckily he was still sitting there and I was able to get my bag back.

When we think about backing up our files, we always think about hard drives failing or fire or theft, but you also have to remember the idiot factor. I sure do now.

One common argument is whether it is better to back up to an external hard drive, or better to use an online backup service. In fact, I wrote an offline vs. online backup post a while ago.

What doesn’t get mentioned a lot is that a lot of people (myself included) do both. It looks like LaCie and Carbonite are getting together to recognize that.

I haven’t seen anything on their websites about it, but Gizmodo is reporting that any LaCie external hard drives purchased after October 15th are entitled to a year of Carbonite service free.

Recognizing the importance of secure digital media for both consumers and professional users, LaCie has partnered with Carbonite, Inc., an innovator in online backup technology, to ensure that each LaCie drive purchased will be bundled with their award-winning services.

For one year following software installation Carbonite will automatically backup the LaCie drive by finding new and modified files, encrypting them twice before leaving the original workstation, then transmitting them by HTTPS (SSL) to a secure data center, where the information remains encrypted, protecting the user¹s privacy. Additionally, backups are completed only when the computer is idle, so the process never interferes with computer performance.

I think this is a really smart move on LaCie’s part. Online backup services are getting more and more popular, so instead of trying to fight the inevitable they are embracing it. Clever.

Wow, there was a shakeup in the online backup space today. Rackspace, a well-known web hosting provider has bought Jungle Disk, an online backup provider. The cloud backup space is heating up.

Jungle Disk provides an interface to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service, which makes this deal a little strange.

Many people think that Rackspace is making this move because they want to better compete against Amazon Web Services, which makes sense, but that is exactly what Jungle Disk uses to store users’ files.

For its part, Jungle Disk says that Amazon S3 will continue to be supported:

Does this mean you will discontinue support for Amazon S3?

Absolutely not. Although Jungle Disk will now also be supporting Rackspace’s Cloud Files, we are still committed to supporting Amazon S3 and other potentially cloud storage providers in both current and future products. Being able to support multiple cloud storage providers is one of the unique differentiators for Jungle Disk and a big reason why Rackspace was interested in acquiring the company.

Even though S3 will continue to be supported (and it would be pretty brutal for their clients if it was not), you have to think that much of the focus is going on be on supporting Rackspace’s cloud offerings.

We will see how this shakes out. Now that Mozy has been bought by EMC and Jungle Disk by Rackspace, I wonder if Carbonite will be next.

Lifehacker has put together a pretty useful spreadsheet comparing a bunch of different online storage providers.

Here’s our feature-by-feature comparison chart of the current roster of online storage services. (All of these services offer some form of security and privacy with uploaded files, along with, in most cases, the ability to share and/or collaborate on documents.)

It goes beyond just backup providers too. Check it out here.

A new version of Carbonite (3.7) has been announced.

Here is the PR-speak:

“We spent a significant amount of time talking with customers for this upgrade of Carbonite,” said David Friend, founder and CEO of Carbonite. “We’ve always had the goal of Carbonite being the simplest online backup to use and we’ve been lauded for our success in that goal, but we are seeking perfection for the day-to-day experience of using Carbonite. We found that our users had some great feedback that, when implemented in Release 3.7, makes Carbonite even easier to use.”

Carbonite also spent time honing performance for version 3.7. Through a series of improvements to the way Carbonite monitors computer resources, Carbonite will offer better system performance during the initial scan and backup upload.

It will be released over the next few weeks. As soon as I get more details on what is actually in there, I’ll post more.

Source: Sys-Con

If anyone has been wanting to sign up for Mozy’s Unlimited Service, I have a coupon code for you. It’s for 10% off all annual and bi-annual signups.

To get the discount, click here to go to the MozyHome Unlimited signup page, and then enter the coupon code OCTOBER (really sneaky).

Of course, if you don’t need more than 2 Gigs right now, there is always Mozy Free.

(Note, I do get a small tip if you use that link, so if you’re interested in buying me a coffee, there you go. Either way Mozy is great).

I have to admit, I was not too familiar with the Mac Roundtable podcast until I saw people talking about it on Twitter.

It caught my attention because the latest episode is all about going paperless, and the ScanSnap gets a lot of love in it.

The podcast doesn’t just focus on the scanning aspect of going paperless, but the workflows and tools involved.

There’s also a good discussion of the security involved – how do you keep confidential information secure (or do you need to?) and how comfortable are you with information “in the cloud”.

One interesting thing is that a number of the roundtablers seem to be migrating to Evernote for their document storage.

Personally, I love Evernote for capturing, well, notes and things I want to capture/get access to on the fly, but I have resisted using it for my document storage.

Why? Well, as you know I am all about the online backups and the cloud, but I just like the control and security of having my primary document storage and OCR-ing here on my machine first. If Evernote went away tomorrow, I would still have all my documents in searchable PDF format.

Evernote is definitely one to watch though – it seems to be getting lots of traction.

One takeaway for me is to look into having at least my sensitive documents stored in an encrypted disk image. I believe David Sparks mentioned that he does that.

The episode is great and I have now subscribed to the podcast. Even if you are not a Mac user, I recommend taking a listen at least to the first “going paperless” section.