It's Free Stuff Friday again, and time for the Friday Freebie.

OK — I know. It's Saturday. I am getting caught up. Long week.

Today's freebie is a little different. Usually, I offer something that you can get by opting in to my mailing list. Today, I am just pointing you to something free that Microsoft is offering that I think is a really cool (and important) tool.

You need to back up your stuff.  Now.

Regular backup is critical. If you have never been in the middle of a legitimate data disaster, it is hard for me to explain that stupid feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when you lose hours, days or months of hard work. If you've been there, you know what I mean.

As a certified computer geek, I have messed with more than a couple dozen backup tools on windows and Unix platforms over the years. I've used free ones, expensive ones, and shareware ones. I've used good ones and bad ones.

Just for the record — by far, most of the backup tools that I have used over the years have been total crap. There are some exceptions, but mostly they were all flawed. They always seem to be too hard to use, unreliable, buggy or slow.

However, recently I needed to backup the internet marketing junk on my home desktop and on my laptop and sync the two results. I have needed to do this for a long time, but I have been dreading it. The backup software that I use on my home network has issues, and does not do “file sync” very well. So I went looking for a solution.

I settled on the free SyncToy 2.0 from Microsoft and a 8GB USB drive. What a great and reliable utility.

Now, I am not a big Microsoft fan — which makes me think they must have bought this tool from someone. Anyway, I sync both machines (a directory on each machine, actually) to my USB stick. This lets me travel with all my data, gives me triple backup security (two separate hard drives and a stick), and ensures that data saved on the laptop is available on the desktop.

Check it out. You'll like it.

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As always, opt in to my list to get access to all the OTHER free stuff (opt-in box in the right hand sidebar). As soon as you opt-in and confirm you subscription, you'll receive instructions on how to log into the members area.

Thanks,
Mark