Use your Gmail account as a backup drive

With the storage space available to Gmail users currently approaching 2.5 gigabytes, you wouldn't be alone if you've begun wondering what purposes (other than email warehousing) you can put your account to. My inbox is relentlessly inundated with exciting job offers and marriage proposals from beautiful women, and even I can't utilise such a generous allocation of web space.

You may be accused of being a cheapskate for using your Gmail account to backup your treasured, irreplaceable documents and whatnot, but I think that's unwarranted unless this is your only backup solution. I use a mini, external, USB, Lacie hard drive and a USB thumb drive to stash away my preciouseses, though stupidly leave them lying right next to my computer, usually permanently connected.

This is stupid because if someone broke into your house they'd swipe the lot, or if your house went up in smoke, similarly, your original files and backups would be lost. It makes perfect sense to take your backup drives with you whenever you leave the house, or at least keep them somewhere other than on your computer desk, but how many of us make a habit of this? It's just so much hassle to have to keep disconnecting, reconnecting and hiding your fail-safe devices.

Gmail provides the ideal second backup solution because their servers don't live in your house... unless maybe you're a down on your luck Google employee sleeping under the desk in your office. Gmail accepts attachments up to 10mb in size, so what you can do to safeguard your important documents is zip them up, attach the compressed archive to an email and send it to yourself.

I did this recently with all my HTML document blog entries. The file arrived safely and I archived it for future reference (Gmail cunningly established that the message was from 'me', and so excluded it from the mail available to be downloaded by my email client, which I thought was quite nifty).
When I tried to do this with a batch of Word and Excel documents, the zip file was rejected by the Gmail server. With a bit of investigation I discovered that this was because Gmail automatically scan inside zip files to check if they contain anything which could be construed as malicious. Office documents can contain macro viruses and so Gmail wrinkles up its nose and looks at them as though they're something squidgy you might step in on the pavement.

One way to avoid Gmail's scrutiny is to compress your documents using a lesser known format. Being primarily a Mac user at home, the first one that sprung to my mind was Apple's disk image format. I downloaded FreeDMG and used it to create an archive of my documents and tried again to send it as an attachment. This time Gmail lapped it up without protest. Hoorah!

When you've found a file format Gmail can't look inside, you might like to make some changes to your account so as to better manage your backups. You can do this using the 'create a filter' page, linked from your inbox. Filters are designed to allow Gmail to recognise and process emails bearing predefined characteristics. For instance, if you ticked the 'has attachment' checkbox and typed 'backup' into the 'subject' box, you could arrange for any emails carrying an attachment and containing the keyword 'backup' in the subject field to be assigned a helpful label and automatically archived - the latter two options are available from the page you are taken to when you press the 'next step' button.

Gmail labels operate much like folders in that they allow you to group together collections of emails making them easier to retrieve at a later date. The main advantage they offer over traditional folders is that emails can be assigned with multiple labels without having to duplicate them. Any labels you create are displayed below the links to your inbox, drafts, trash etc. folders for easy access. Whenever you click on one of these labels you are presented with a list of all the emails previously allocated to that category.

If you want to reduce the chance of emails being wrongly assigned to your new backup area, you could beef-up the precision of your filter using 'plus addresses'. Plus addresses can be created 'on the fly' by appending a + symbol and a series of numbers or characters to your username, like so: tom.cruise+backup@gmail.com.

Whenever you send yourself a backup, use this address and remember to edit your filter so the 'to' address matches your +backup address and it will be labelled and archived accordingly. Of course, if disaster struck and you needed to recover your files, you'd have to contact the kooky Scientologist and ask him to hand them over. ;)

Plus addresses have many more practical applications besides. You can use them to split invitation replies into 'accept' and 'decline' categories, trash spam or monitor how your email address is used by the companies you submit it to.

Windows users might like to skip all this emailing yourself malarkey and instead use their Gmail accounts as they would any other drive from within Explorer. If this appeals you'll want to check out the Viksoe Gmail Drive shell extension.

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I think, therefore I type, therefore I backup

Assuming you possess a brain and can type, you are likely to have a number of important personal documents stored on your computer - documents you would be lost without should anything disastrous happen to your hard drive. If you own a CD or DVD writer these could be backed up to a writable disk, however, this is slow and inconvenient if you regularly make changes to these documents (think of your CV or personal web site).

What I've done to address this problem is buy a Smart Media/Compact Flash card reader and a few CF cards to store my data on. The card reader is attached to my computer via a USB cable, and accessing the cards entails nothing more complicated than inserting them into the reader. Whenever I do this, a shortcut to the CF card appears on my desktop allowing me to access it just like a hard drive, whether I'm using Windows or OS X.

Now here comes the clever bit. To backup all my irreplaceable documents, I use a simple, free command utility called F-Sync to synchronise the contents of the folders they reside in. Once you know exactly which folders you need to backup, and where you would like the copies to be placed, you can save this information in a batch file alongside the F-Sync executable and run it whenever the need arises with an effortless double click of the mouse.

To create such a batch file, open a command prompt window and type 'edit backup.bat'. Now type out the commands necessary to create the backups, save the file and select exit from the file menu. For example, my batch file looks like this...

fsync d:\Documents e:\Documents /F fsync d:\Pictures\ e:\Pictures /F fsync d:\Email e:\Email /F /P

The first drive/folder reference should point to the source folder containing the files you wish to backup, whereas the second drive/folder reference should point to the intended destination folder and drive where you would like the duplicates to be placed. The /F switch isn't mandatory, though I use it to skip any confirmation requests so the synchronisation will be carried out in the background while I get on with other tasks. The single /P switch indicates that I'd like F-Sync to pause once it has finished synchronising the third and final folder before closing the DOS window so I can see at a glance how many files have been updated.

Public safety warning - pay close attention

It is absolutely essential that you allocate a separate folder for each stage because by default F-Sync deletes any files or folders which aren't present in the source folder - if you were to synchronise your files to the root of your chosen drive, F-Sync would wipe out everything except the source folder - something I'm sure you'll want to avoid. Incidentally, if you only want to add new files to your backup drive, rather than add new files and delete redundant ones you can use the /C switch to prevent deletion.

Perhaps you'd like to have this backup routine performed automatically each time you boot your computer. If so, why not add backup.bat to your startup menu? To make the process even less intrusive you could use the /S switch to prevent the DOS box from appearing.

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Backing up your legally owned DVDs - a 'how to' guide

A brief introduction to the DVD format

Please sir, can I have some more? Certainly Oliver, how many gigabytes would you like? I am of course talking about data storage space. Once upon a time, having the ability to backup 650mb of data to a CD was a feat met with gasps of awe. Since then the emergence of the digital versatile disk (or DVD) has upped the ante along with the storage capacity possibilities, quite frankly making the trusty CD writer look like a bit of a lightweight. It is now feasible to write up to a whopping 9.4 gigabytes of whatever takes your fancy to a single CD sized disk providing you have the right hardware.

At a glance it's difficult to tell the difference between a CD and a DVD, though judging this particular book by its cover would be highly misleading. Storage capacity represents the most notable distinction between the comparatively minuscule CD and the mighty DVD. Both formats store data within imperceptibly tiny grooves aligned so as to spiral around the surface of the media. Within these grooves are found pits and bumps representing the ones and zeros of digital information that are read by CD/DVD drive lasers.

DVDs are able to store many times more data than CDs owing to the smaller pits and a tighter track spacing of their structural makeup, the landscape of which is scanned by smaller laser beams than those of a CD drive. Without going into great detail, your CD drive, unless it happens to be a CD/DVD combo drive, will never be able to read DVDs because their larger laser beams cannot interpret the smaller surface data structure of DVDs. No matter how many internet rumours you have the misfortune to stumble across relating to this, it cannot be done, no way, no how; if you want to read DVDs you will need to buy a DVD-ROM drive.

A comparison of the many variants

DVDs can accommodate up to four layers of data, two on each side of the disk, in comparison to the single layer offered by CDs. To be able to read the various layers of information, DVD drive lasers alter the intensity of their focus to probe deeper into the disk - each change of focus is known as a 'layer switch'. Note that because the lasers in DVD players and DVD-ROM drives are suspended in a fixed position it is necessary to manually flip over double sided disks in order to access all the data. The possibility of utilising up to four layers of information on a single disk has resulted in the development of four different types of DVD, each distinguished by their data capacities.

Single sided, single layered disks can hold a maximum of 4.7 GB worth of data, while single sided, dual layered disks can hold roughly 8.5 GB. Double sided, single layered disks have the potential to store 9.4 GB worth of data, whereas double sided, dual layered disks can contain approximately 17 GB. At present it is only possible to create DIY DVDs containing no more than 9.4 GB worth of digital delicacies because there are no DVD writers on the market which are capable of burning dual layered disks.

To give you a rough idea of how long you can expect to have to twiddle your thumbs waiting for a full DVD to be written, a 2x writer can record a full 4.7 GB DVD in approximately 30 minutes and a 4x writer would achieve the same task in approximately 15 minutes. From these figures it is clear that CD and DVD drive speeds cannot be directly equated; a 2x speed DVD writer works much faster than a 2x CD writer.

DVDs come in three flavours; DVD-Video, DVD-Audio and DVD-ROM. DVD-Video disks contain a combination of audio and video content and are used to store the movies you can buy in stores or rent from Blockbuster et al. DVD-Audio disks, although far less common in mainstream retail outlets, are used to store high fidelity, multi channel stereo music. DVD-ROMs are computer compatible disks used for data archival purposes, much like the CD-R format only with greater scope.

To further complicate the state of affairs, there are three DVD recordable formats; DVD-RAM, DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW. At present they are to be considered competing formats as a de facto standard has yet to be decided upon. Unsurprisingly this creates all kinds of quandaries for the consumer, not least the fact that the various formats are incompatible with one another - a single format DVD-R/RW drive is incapable of writing to DVD+R/RW disks and vice versa.

Also, there's a good chance that your home made DVD movies will not work in your standalone DVD player. To avoid such dilemmas you can either buy a writer which supports multiple formats (commonly known as a combo drive), or you can patiently bide your time until one or the other drive/media rises victorious from the ashes of the format war before taking the plunge.

DVD-RAM disks have more in common with hard drives than with CD-R or CD-RW disks as they can be written to up to a hundred thousand times and do not need to be reformatted before use. They can store up to 9.4 GB worth of data on a double sided disk, though because most DVD players and DVD-ROM drives do not support them, DVD-RAM drives aren't worth considering unless your requirements do not extend beyond backing up computer data and re-using that data on a single computer or multiple computers which have DVD-RAM drives installed. My prediction is that the DVD-RAM format will disappear into obscurity in the near future leaving the pluses to do battle with the minuses.

The DVD-R format, devised by Pioneer, has the advantage over DVD-RAM that it is supported by most DVD players and DVD-ROM drives. DVD-R disks are capable of storing 4.7 GB worth of data per side yet they can only be written once. Keeping it within the family, DVD-RW disks can be written up to a thousand times and can also contain 4.7 GB of data per side. Likewise they are compatible with most DVD players and DVD-ROM drives. DVD-R media can additionally be divided into DVD-R(A) disks which are designed for professional authoring, and DVD-R(G) disks which are intended to be used for general use.

Of the three formats, DVD+R is the only one to offer complete compatibility with existing DVD players, and because it is backed by a number of the most important names in the computer industry (Dell, Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and Sony) it has a good chance of outliving the competition to become 'the one' - I'm sure The Highlander would be proud. DVD+R drives are not able to read or write to DVD-RAM disks but gain ground because they are backwards compatible with CD-R and CD-RW disks. The usual 4.7 GB per side capacity rule applies and they can be re-written up to a thousand times.

It's worth noting at this point that older DVD players cannot play any kind of re-writable disk so if you intend to use this type of media you will have to either invest in a new DVD player or only play back re-writable disks in your computer's DVD drive. The newer your DVD player, the better chance it has of correctly reading your disks irrespective of the format they take.

Making your DVD player region free

Like Bill Gates, motion picture studios are evil, which is why they try to insist that you only buy DVDs from within the same geographic region in which you bought your DVD-ROM or DVD player. They do try to defend their motivations for doing so with a number of plausible sounding justifications i.e. because movies are released at the cinema at different dates across the globe, DVD release dates have to be carefully regulated so as to ensure that people in the UK, for instance, cannot buy a movie DVD while that same movie is still being shown at the cinema, though I still think my original explanation is more apt. ;)

Working in cahoots with the naughty people in the movie biz, the DVD Copy Control Association assert that anyone wanting to manufacture a DVD-ROM drive or DVD player must implement region code restrictions into their hardware. This can be changed a maximum of five times by the user and a further four times if the unit is returned to the manufacturer.

When this system was first introduced it was met by a public backlash; unsurprisingly many people were not prepared to have their consumer rights compromised for the sake of helping the movie industry to line its already bulging pockets. It was soon discovered that it was possible to circumvent this protection to force DVD drives/players to play all DVDs regardless of where they originated, hence the region-free DVD player was born. The code which stipulates which DVDs can be played in a particular DVD player is stored on a chip very similar to that of a motherboard BIOS chip, and as a result they can be 'flashed' to change the way they function in an identical fashion.

To make a DVD player region free you have to update the player's firmware with a patched version. Your first task is to identify the model number of your DVD drive and find out if it is region locked - you can do this using a utility known as Drive Region Info. It's very unlikely that your drive will already be region free, but if Drive Region Info reveals that it is, you obviously do not need to alter your firmware.

Once you know the model number of your drive you can download patched firmware for it from 'The Firmware Page' and apply it in the usual way (as described in the misc. section of the FAQ). As always, remember to heed the warnings found in the readme.txt file of the relevant 'flashkit' archive and follow the instructions to the letter, otherwise you could do permanent damage to your hardware. When you reboot your computer, load Drive Region Info again to check that the changes have taken effect.

Creating data DVDs and extracting movie DVDs to your hard drive

Creating your own data DVD is accomplished in exactly the same way as you would write a CD-R/RW. In Nero, for instance, you would select 'new' from the 'file' menu and then choose the DVD option from the drop down selection box before clicking 'OK'. Files can be added to the compilation by dragging and dropping them into the empty pane below the new DVD title. Once you are ready to commit your choices to disk you can write the DVD by clicking on the 'write' dialog box, making sure you check the 'finalise' option if you do not wish to add anything to the DVD at a later date.

Unfortunately Nero is incapable of backing up commercial, copyright protected data, movie or audio DVDs, and similarly trying to merely copy the files to your hard drive will achieve very little. Game copyright protection mechanisms have already been covered elsewhere on this site so should be familiar territory. Movie copyright protection on the other hand may be new to you so we will briefly look into this before moving onto discussing possible ways to get around it. Nearly all movies worth watching are encrypted using the content scrambling system (CSS) so cannot be copied using standard CD/DVD writing tools, or simple copy and paste techniques.

For your DVD player to be able to access these disks at all, the key which decrypts the scrambled data before streaming it to your TV or computer monitor has to be provided alongside the 'lock'. To prevent people from copying protected disks these keys are kept well hidden in the normally inaccessible lead-in area of the disk. Whenever you try to copy such a disk you get the scrambled data, but not the key which allows you to make sense of that data. As a result, errors are spat out at you whenever you try to play back the protected content from your hard drive i.e. the movie .VOB files which contain an amalgamation of video, audio and subtitle streams.

I realise warning you what not to do isn’t a great deal of help on its own, so now would be an opportune moment to tell you what you should be doing. Downloading DVD Decrypter would be an excellent place to start - this will provide the means to create an image of a protected DVD which can be stored on your hard drive for further manipulation or play back. It's free and luckily is no more difficult to use than Clone CD, a program you are perhaps more familiar with. Let's get to work. Run the program and insert the DVD you wish to decrypt into your DVD drive. DVD Decrypter should detect the disk and locate the most suitable drive or partition on which to store the extracted data i.e. the one with the most free space available.

I should point out at this stage of the proceedings that because a movie extracted to a single ISO file will consume upwards of 4 GB of hard disk space, the partition you intend to store the file on must have been formatted to use the NTFS file system. This is because FAT32 doesn't support files of this magnitude. If you don’t have an NTFS partition available and do not wish to convert one of your FAT32 partitions you will have to use the 'file' rather than the ISO output option of DVD Decrypter (files contained on DVD-Video disks cannot be greater than 1 GB in size), but more of that later.

DVD Decrypter will auto-magically select all the constituent parts of the movie, leaving you only the task of prodding the DVD to hard drive transfer button in the bottom left corner of the application GUI. Within 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer hardware and the length of the movie, the transfer of the movie VOB files to your hard drive will be complete.

These can now be played using a range of software DVD players, the best of which are thought to be Win DVD and Power DVD. In Power DVD you can do this by pressing control and O to access the open menu followed by selecting "open DVD files on hard disk drive". Finally from within the subsequent dialog box choose the VIDEO_TS.IFO file extracted by DVD Decryper (IFO files contain navigational information used by your DVD player to jump between chapters etc).

To achieve the same thing in Power DVD you first have to create a folder on the root of your hard drive called VIDEO_TS (note this is case sensitive) as you would find on the original DVD and move all the extracted files into it. To play back the movie you would then click on the options button and select the hard drive where the files are stored.

If you'd rather turn your DVDs into ISO files and play them using a CD/DVD mounting tool such as Daemon Tools then that is also possible with DVD Decrypter. In this case you would select ISO (the 'read' variant obviously) from the 'mode' menu before hitting the start button.

As you've probably gathered by now this is a great way to backup your DVD movies if you aren't lucky enough to own a DVD writer, assuming you have plenty of spare hard drive real estate that is. If you have got a DVD writer you might like to learn how to go about writing your extracted files to a blank DVD (or two). This will be our next task.

Because DVDs come on either dual layered 8.5 GB disks (DVD-9) or single layered 4.7 GB disks (DVD-5) they cannot all be duplicated in the same way. The most notable stumbling block is the fact that no DVD writers exist that can write dual layered disks, so if you want to copy a DVD-9 disk you have to either use two recordable DVDs, down sample the DVD to make it fit on a single disk, chop out the extra features to save space and then write it to a single disk or use a combination of these methods.

Backing up DVD-5 and DVD-9 disks to recordable DVDs

Backing up a DVD-5 disk is a cinch as it is possible to create a 1:1 copy using only DVD Decrypter. Assuming you have created an ISO image of the DVD you wish to backup using the methods described earlier, all you have to do to write the file to a recordable DVD is to select Mode > ISO > Write from within the DVD Decrypter interface, insert a blank disk and hit the hard drive to DVD transfer button.

The trouble is, most modern DVD disks are of the DVD-9 variety so unfortunately they cannot be backed up using this method. It would seem that there are nearly as many methods to backup such disks as there are DVDs. Everyone has their own favoured means and it's difficult to say outright which, if any, is superior because they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps the most sensible thing to do is choose the one which suits you and not get too caught up arguing your case for or against using one piece of software or the other... which is exactly what I'll proceed to do now because I have no self control. ;)

The process can be as easy or difficult as you want it to be - some DVD copying guides will span many pages and list up to a hundred time consuming steps which you must follow to the letter in order to produce a working backup. Those people who put their faith in such methods rationalise that only by doing this can you create perfect copies indistinguishable from the original. They may well be right if you're the type of person who can spot a needle in a haystack from a hundred yards while wearing sun glasses during an eclipse, but for everyone else, the quick and easy methods will suffice.

Also keep in mind that as time goes on, more and more one-click DVD backer-up-erers will appear on the market; the extraction/writing process will become more refined and there will be even less evidence to support doing things the hard way (as I type, the people behind the award winning Clone CD are working on a DVD hybrid which should be the answer to many frustrated DVD devotee's dreams). Quality issues aside, of course there will always be people who will continue to do everything manually using a number of different programs because they think it makes them look l33t (that's quite clever with computers for anyone who doesn't speak hacker).

One of my favourite methods which involves a few more steps than your average idiot-proof, Clone CD style tool is to extract the movie using DVD Decrypter and then write it to a single DVD using Pinnacle's Instant Copy (he says backtracking slightly from recommending one click solutions). This method allows you to cram a full DVD-9 movie onto a single recordable DVD, although it does detract from the video quality of the original movie somewhat.

First of all, extract the movie data from the DVD using the Mode > File method, select all the files from within the 'edit' menu and begin transferring them to your hard disk using the transfer button in the bottom left hand corner of the DVD Decrypter GUI. Once the task is complete it's time to whip out Instant Copy and set it to work. From within the 'source' menu option choose hard disk, select the folder where your movie data files are stored and locate the VIDEO_TS.IFO file. Now select the destination DVD writer drive and click on the DVD tab. Change the copy method to 'Customised Resize' and the preferred destination to DVD and press the start button.

You will now be required to configure the video size settings. The challenge here is to reduce the video size and hence the file sizes so that they fit on a single recordable DVD. You can either reduce the video size of the main movie and the extras indiscriminately or you can reduce the video size of the extras while maintaining the video size of the main movie; it's all about compromising to find the right balance. Look at the contents box and you will see a folder labelled 'Video Tracks'. If you click on this, a list of all the components of the movie will appear (you will easily be able to recognise the main movie as it will be many times longer than the supporting files). Select each of them one by one and under the 'video' tab drag the slider to resize the video accordingly.

The options under the 'audio' tab allow you to selectively remove audio tracks (if you only speak English you might like to remove the multi-language support entirely), and the 'subtitles' tab provides the means to hack out the subtitles to recoup even more space - no great loss unless you suffer from hearing difficulties of course. When the data size bar turns green (to indicate that the files are small enough to fit on a single recordable DVD) and you're happy to commit your amendments to file, click the OK button to begin converting the movie.

The process will take anywhere up to six hours to complete so you might want to set it up to work over night or while you're out at work, school or wherever (if you're not prepared to wait this long you might like to use a program called DVD2One instead of Instant Copy - the quality of the resulting movies isn't as good, but you can extract and write a DVD in under an hour). Once complete, a dialog box will appear requesting you to insert a blank DVD. Do as it says and our work here is done.

The one click method

All in one conversion tools that claim to create perfect DVD backups are nothing new, though when it comes to the crunch, many of the authors of such programs are exposed as blatant charlatans as they do nothing of the kind. Instead they produce DVD rips in SVCD or DivX format without the need for a DVD writer. These kinds of rips would be perfectly acceptable if what you require are reasonable quality movies in a format small enough to fit on a CD-R, however, what I object to are the false claims which typify the spiel of far too many DVD software authors. Separating the hype from the truth can be a time consuming process, though one technique I often use is to quickly scan through the introductory text on DVD software web sites to pick out the text which has obviously been translated from Korean, Chinese or Japanese using Babelfish.

This may sound totally ethnocentric and narrow minded, yet you'd be surprised by how many frauds can be exposed by this simple method. Besides, if you've created a quality product to be proud of, you don't present it to an English speaking audience using sloppy, grammatically incorrect Engrish. If your English is terrible, but you're a talented programmer, for your sake, get a native English speaker to help you - otherwise your work will be dismissed by prejudiced people like me even if the code is top notch. ;) If your English and your programming is terrible, for my sake, don't bother at all.

Finding the real deal is a rarity - DVD X Copy is probably the closest you'll get. It doesn't create copies which are identical to the original movie, but it comes so close it's not worth splitting hairs. Because DVD X Copy has been deemed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to be in breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 321 Studios, the authors of DVD X Copy, have had to implement a number of conciliatory features into the program to sidestep potential legal battles.

What this means for the consumer is that the movies created by DVD X Copy have to be tampered with, which brings into question just how "perfect" the results truly are. Firstly, the program stamps its own copyright protection onto your movies to prevent further duplication. Secondly, a digital watermark is embedded into your movies so as to aid identification of the licensed owner of the software used to create the duplicate. Finally, a disclaimer is appended to the beginning of all movies to inform viewers that the disk is a backup copy intended for personal use only.

"Personal use" is the key term here; the DMCA states that the owner of an original DVD is perfectly entitled to create a single backup copy of that disk providing the duplicate is only watched in private and is not distributed either freely or for profit. For the MPAA to obtain a court order insisting that the product be withdrawn from the market they would have to prove that DVD X Copy is being used first and foremost as a piracy tool; a task they are currently working on. At least for now, consumers can continue to exercise their right to backup their legally owned DVDs safeguarded by their 'fair use' agreement.

Legal wranglings aside, DVD X Copy provides the means to backup almost identical copies of DVD-5 or DVD-9 disks including menus, trailers and special features. DVD-5 disks can be backed up in their entirety to a single recordable DVD, whereas two disks are required to back up a DVD-9 movie assuming you do not want to lose any of the accompanying extras. If saving a recordable disk is a higher priority you can have DVD X Copy remove all such material leaving you with only the main movie which will comfortably fit on a single recordable disk. When you first insert the DVD you intend to copy, DVD X Copy will inform you whether or not it will fit on a single disk.

If it won't, the main movie is copied to the first disk and the extras are stored on the second disk, while particularly long movies are spanned across two disks. How the second disk begins playing when inserted is your decision - it can either begin instantly or be selected from the main menu. The exact point at which longer movies are split is initially decided for you, yet you always have the option to alter the default selection if it does not suit your requirements.

When you're happy with your choices you can press the 'copy now' button to begin transferring the files to your hard drive. If you have a separate DVD-ROM drive and DVD writer you may like to use the extremely useful 'output disk is ready' feature, which allows you to insert a blank DVD into your writer at the same time as you insert the source disk and have DVD X Copy begin writing to it once the creation of the temporary files on your hard drive is complete. Otherwise you will be expected to baby sit the process until the extraction is complete and then switch disks.

So there you have it; the ability to create one click, hands free DVD backups is now within reach. The decision to use this method should ultimately be based upon weighing up the advantages of speed and simplicity against the ability to have complete control over your backups. Personally I think it's a small sacrifice to make, and in any case since you should only be making copies for personal use, you only have yourself to please. If your backups are good enough for you, feel free to ignore the the ultra-picky elitists - most of them are just grumpy because people are less impressed by their skills now that your average silver surfer can achieve the same results with minimal technical know-how. ;)

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I want to use a CD image backup, but haven't got a CD writer. Is there any way I can run it from my hard drive?

Yes, it's possible to do this. First of all you need to get hold of a program that is capable of extracting .iso format files - Win Image will do very nicely. Install the program, run it, select the 'file' option from the menu bar and choose the 'open' option. Search through your hard drive for the .iso file you wish to decompress and double-click on it. Return to the menu bar, but this time select the 'image' option and scroll down the list until you come across the word 'extract'. If you click on this, a dialogue box should appear to ask you where you would like to extract the files to. Pick a suitable directory and press the extract button.

For application CD images you can just browse through the extracted files until you find one labelled setup.exe or install.exe and run it. Once the program is installed you will no longer need the extracted files so they can be deleted to conserve hard drive space (remember to keep the .iso file generated from your original CD, however, in case you need to re-install it at a later date).

On the other hand, if you are attempting to install a game to avoid having to keep your original CD in your optical drive, your task is going to be a bit more tricky. First of all you will have to choose one of two options. The first is to install the game and overwrite the main executable file with a copyright protection stripped version, available from Game Copy World. In this case, the game would be playable, but because the replacement executable bypasses any CD checks, you will probably lose any audio tracks and/or video sequences stored within the CD image. If you decide to take this path, make sure you select the 'full installation' option, if there is one, when you install the game to ensure that your hard drive can read the maximum amount of data available without accessing the CD itself.

If you are a bit more patient, a better option would be to use a piece of CD emulation software e.g. Virtual Drive, Daemon Tools or Fantom CD. These allow you to trick your computer into thinking that the CD image on your hard drive is actually a real CD sitting in your optical drive. Once you have one of these installed, all you have to do is select the CD image you wish to run and choose the 'mount' function. This will create a new virtual CD icon, which can be accessed through Explorer in the same way as any other conventional CD.

As these tools incorporate 'on the fly' data decompression, your CD images will take up minimal space on your hard drive until the moment they are accessed. Also, because hard drives are many times faster than optical ones, your games will run at a lightning fast pace without leaving you twiddling your thumbs waiting for them to spin up.

To begin using a virtual CD, simply double-click on its icon as though it were a real CD and wait for the installation menu to appear. If you now proceed to install the game in the customary fashion you can play it as usual, but with the added bonus that you'll never be able to lose the CD - because there isn't one!

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Invasion of the data snatchers

Several of my CDs have developed a murky sort of coating, which looks a bit like condensed steam. The disks in question have now been rendered unreadable. What is it exactly?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but what you've got there is a reflective aluminium disk layer munching CD fungus. Usually the malicious critter attacks the edge of the disk where the aluminium is exposed and then eats its way inwards, though it is not uncommon for it to also attack the polycarbonate sandwich too. The aluminium layer is an essential component of the disk because its reflective surface provides the means of bouncing your CD drive's lasers back into the unit to allow it to read the data. Once the aluminium layer is gone, there is nothing to provide this feedback and the disk is rendered unreadable.

So, what can I do about it? Well not a lot actually. The disks which have already been damaged are probably beyond repair, but you can prevent the same thing from happening in the future by only buying writable disks which have a gold reflective layer. The data stored on these disks is protected from the fungus because the gold layer is immune to its ability to munch through the coating.

The only other option you have is to try to seal the exposed edge of your CDs using a clear varnish to prevent the fungus from getting a foothold, but this can also be problematic for obvious reasons. Diamonds may be forever, but CDs aren't.

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How can I divide a large file into smaller segments so it can be sent via email or backed up to a floppy disk?

One option available to you is to use a freeware program known as HJ Split. The beauty of this tool is that it is tiny and no installation is necessary to run it. Just double click on the the file's icon, select the file you wish to break up, let HJ Split know the size of the resulting chunks you would like to create and finally click on the start button to begin the process. HJ Split will also recombine these files for you once they reach their final destination, so if you want to email them to a friend make sure you also send them the program itself.

Since most people will already have installed on their system some sort of compression tool, you may instead like to create a spanned, compressed archive. Winzip, Winace and Winrar are equally adept at this task so you may as well use whichever one you happen to have installed.

Take Winzip, for instance; to span a file across multiple disks, create a zip file in the usual manner and when requested to choose a location to store the resulting archive in, select your floppy drive. If the file exceeds the capacity of a single disk, when it becomes full, Winzip will request you to insert another disk to which it can continue backing up your data.

From within the same menu, it is also possible to use Winzip to chop up compressed archives using arbitrary cut off points and save the files to your hard drive.

You want to create a rar archive instead? You would wouldn't you, you awkward so and so. ;) Luckily, that's no more difficult than spanning a zip file. Locate the files you wish to add to your rar archive and highlight them, right-click on one of them and select 'add to archive'. When the 'archive name and parameters' menu appears, give your archive-to-be an appropriate name and then in the box that reads 'split to volumes, bytes' type in, or select the size of the data chunks you would like Winrar to create. Click OK and your task is complete. That wasn't too painful, was it?

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Virtual disk drives

The mystery of eternally dwindling hard drive space, in terms of unfathomability, ranks alongside such conundrums as why certain people insist on responding to each and every question with a drawling "what?" or "eh?" when they've heard you perfectly well, or why some people insist on facing the wrong way when waiting for their bus (surely I'm not the only one to have noticed this phenomenon?). I can't help you get to the bottom of the latter two enigmas, but you'll be pleased to know that help is close at hand where sourcing extra storage space is concerned.

One possible solution is to employ virtual storage areas on the web. While this is no substitute for having files stored on your own local hard drive they can help to lighten the load when you find yourself struggling to find a home for your latest digital acquisition or you need a place to store backup copies of your irreplaceable documents. Access to these virtual drives is restricted using a personal username and password to ensure that your data is stored away securely. It is then up to you to decide whether to use this space for your own personal storage requirements, or to pass on the login details to your friends so that they can access your files as well.

The emergence of web drives is clearly good news for file sharers since anywhere between 20 and 500 megabytes of data can be stored on each new account (depending on which company you choose to host your files). Furthermore, you can create as many new accounts as you like as long as you use a different contact e-mail address each time.

Much like free web site hosts the companies who offer web drive services set up business and fold in the blink of an eye, so to keep up you're going to need a well maintained list of what's hot and what's not. Well actually, in the land of virtual drives it's more like a comparison of what's hanging onto life by a thread and what's deader than the proverbial dodo. Nevertheless, Drive Seek fits the bill very nicely. This site provides up to date listings of all the web drive services currently available, reviews, FAQs, a very comprehensive customisation virtual drive search engine and an informative newsletter. If that doesn't quench your thirst for knowledge the online storage section of Epinions.com is also home to a number of enlightening appraisals.

A particularly useful feature proffered by virtual drives is that you can simply copy and paste files straight from the web to your virtual drive to be downloaded at a later date. Over at Freediskspace this function is known as a 'Web Clipper', Freedrive incorporates a similar tool known as 'Surf N' Save', and you can expect the other companies to follow suit in the near future. To make use of these tools you will need to either install a browser plugin or a small desktop application. Virtual drive browser plugins aim to integrate the new 'copy to web drive' option with your current web browser, while virtual drive desktop applications coexist alongside your existing data storage devices (accessed via 'My Computer') and purport to emulate your local hard drive as accurately as possible.

In effect all you have to do to upload data to your virtual drive is drag the files you wish to upload onto the icon representing your virtual drive. Note that some of these browser add-ons utilize javascript, so make sure your browser and/or internet security options are set to allow javascript to run.

One question I am frequently asked is "can I use Getright or Gozilla with web drives?". The quick answer is yes in most cases, but there are several caveats you must familiarize yourself with first. To begin with, some web drive services will require you to be logged into your account while downloading. If the server detects a lack of activity it often kicks you out so that you can no longer access your files. Also, if you are using Freediskspace, currently the most popular web drive, you will find that the links to your files are changed every so often (roughly about once an hour), so be prepared for your links to go dead in the middle of a transfer.

Allowing people to use download managers in conjunction with web drives clearly poses a conflict of interests for the web drive providers. Web drive companies are funded by pay-per-click, rotating ad banners or similar forms of advertising - assuming people actually click on them while they are downloading. If you are visiting the home page of a web drive service merely to import direct links into your download manager the opportunity of viewing these ads is drastically reduced. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the people at Freediskspace et al aren't exactly ecstatic about this proposition and so will do everything within their power to make life difficult for you.

The master plan then is that if you can't get your download manager to cooperate, as a last resort you will be forced to make use of their file manager instead and thus be coerced into viewing their ads. It is a constant arms race between the two parties. The file sharing community devises a way to use a download manager with a specific web drive, and this method works very well for a short period of time. When the web drive administrators realise what is going on they put a stop to it by changing the way file requests are sent to their servers so that we the downloaders have to go back to the drawing board and think of a new solution. This tit for tat battle goes on until the web drive people get so sick of toiling in vain that they decide to start charging for their services to deter people from exploiting them, or they throw in the towel and discontinue their services altogether.

The growing pains don't end there unfortunately. Those of you with fast connections may be limited to downloading at much slower rates than your modem is capable of, and some web drive companies set a limit on the maximum amount of data you are permitted to transfer in a single day. Although the situation is improving all the time, certain web drives do not support the resume function. Another threat to the future of web drives is the role they predictably have played in hosting illegal copyright protected media. If the powers that be deem the web drive companies to be wilfully facilitating piracy they could well pull the plug - that is if the people running these servers don't engage in virtual harikari first.

If all that hasn't put you off, here's an example to demonstrate how you can get your download manager to communicate effectively with web drives (in this case we'll be using Freediskspace). Once you have logged into your account the first thing you must do is uncheck the 'enable multiple up/downloads option' and hit the refresh button. Now if you hover your cursor over one of the files you wish to download you will notice that rather than a javascript link, a real web address will appear in your browser's status bar. All you have to do now is drag the files into your download manager and select a place to store them in the usual way.

Alternatively you could right-click on the files, select properties from the context menu and using the copy and paste function tell your download manager where the files you wish to download are located. If you plan to try this I would suggest downloading one file at a time and refreshing the window periodically so that you receive the latest file locations, even if this necessitates babysitting your PC until the task is complete. One technique that seems to work quite well is to use the Freediskspace file manager to download the largest file in a set whilst using Flashget, Getright or Gozilla to transfer the rest. This will prevent you from being logged out and the file locations from being altered.

The mechanisms used to allow you to transfer files from web drives using a download manager are very diverse so a different set of instructions will be necessary in each case. To find out how to use your download manager with other web drive services try searching my blog using the name of the web drive in question as the keyword.

Is it really worth all the hassle though? Probably not; if you can get your files elsewhere I would give web drives a miss. Nevertheless, there may come a time when the files you require are only available on a web drive and you do not have the luxury of an alternative source. For times like this it helps if you are familiar with all the various web drive workarounds, and in any case, it never hurts to have a few more tricks up your sleeve.

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