My New Mobile Storage Strategy

I’m now using a Mac Book Air full time.  Over the past several weeks, I’ve needed files and data that is on my old device or on a backup on a hard drive in my office.  I’ve had no way to get to the data — I’ve felt helpless.  But also that I’ve been lazy, and haven’t designed a better plan.  I’ve been thinking of the iCloud approach to backing up and getting a new iPad.  That’s how it should work.  You get a new device, connect it, and get your stuff.  It’s also one of the reasons I really like the Chromebook approach.

It has a limited about of local solid state storage.  So it actually has 250 GB of storage which is way more than what used to be: “You’ll never use that much hard drive space.”  Having said that, I blasted through the 250 GB of storage on my old laptop.  There is a ton you can read about the Mac Book Air.  The biggest deal for this post is that it is ultra portable and meant to be on the go.  When I need the local / on board storage for projects — well, I need it to be there.  So I’m choosing not to fill it with the “just in case I need it” stuff.  I’m going to try my best to have a better strategy for my data and projects and most importantly NOT get into the rat race of full hard drive/ delete stuff/ fill hard drive again.

For my archived work stuff I’m now using a combination of tools for my storage strategy.  Here’s the plan:

• Download the Skydrive Mac App and Install (you can do the same thing on a PC as well).
• When launching the setup of the Skydrive App, you can choose the storage location of the mirrored storage folder.
• Get out your USB 1TB ultra portable USB powered external HD.  I use a Seagate GoFlex.
• Set the Skydrive storage location to live on the external HD.
• Let everything copy down or sync to the new location.

Images sources:  Seagate GoFlex   |  Macbook Air   |  Skydrive