V stuff

[anotheoldgit]

Has anyone else had trouble with this new service from virgin Media?

I decided to take them up on their free offer.

First I had trouble getting it to recognise my password etc.

After ringing 150 and getting into touch with someone in India, I found it very hard to recognise what she said.

They promised to ring me back but didn't, so I had to ring again, and they got me up and running except I had to alter my password for some reason.

I then decided to backup all my photos, but find it is taking ages, and it starts to stop, so I have to come off and start again.

Why do the photos take so long to back-up.?

Is this new service safe to back up private documents and emails etc,?

When it states one is not allowed to back-up copyright music, does this mean I will not be able to back-up my CDs that I have purchased?

[Ethel]

I don't know about V+ but I do know it takes an absolute age to back up photos to somewhere like Photobucket - it's a lot of data.

If you are at all concerned about security, buy an external hard drive with a back up facility and use that instead.

[anotheoldgit]

I did consider this Ethel, have you any suggestions what type to get?

Incidentally I know you are a cable user, haven't you any wish to go on Vstuff?

For the first 3 months you can get a quantity of photos printed and posted to you free of charge.

[fo3nix]

I don't use the service so can't comment.

But I would only use any remote backup system if I had some trust for the company providing the service. I don't really trust Virgin media, so would not use their service.

External hard drives: just goto somewhere like amazon.co.uk or ebuyer.com and find the largest capacity ones you can afford (you will use all that space eventually, I guarantee it). Maxtor, LaCie, Western Digital, Hitachi, Seagate, are all good brands.

Then either use a free program called CloneZilla (which you put onto a CD), which will allow you to make a perfect copy of your internal drive, or you use a program like SyncBack (free) to copy certain files and folders that you want backed up, systematically. Do the former once a week or every few weeks, and the latter once a day or every few days (since it takes so little time). Neglecting backups is never good!

Backup of (legally) downloaded music: yes, that will constitute copyright theft. However, check the license agreement you signed from whatever company you purchased these songs from to see if this use case is allowed. For example, Apple provides a legal music purchasing system with iTunes. On their Macs is a piece of software called Time Machine, which does a good job of backups; this also backs up all your music, so it must be from by Apple.

[Ethel]

anotheoldgit - I use Virgin for the emails (excellent, I find) but I access them from Gmail so I rarely log in to the Virgin site, except for eBilling and to check service status now and again.
I also make full use of their free web space, again excellent.

I don't use their security software, or use V storage. 5gb just isn't big anyway.

My external hard drive is a dinky little thing, with a 500gb capacity and is powered entirely by usb (no mains plug, thankfully). I keep it in my safe when I'm not using it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-500gb-External -Desktop-Drive/dp/B0020FVKO8/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF 8&s=electronics&qid=1241430518&sr=8-7

[anotheoldgit]

fo3nix

Thank you for your very informative post. I would be very interesting to know why you do not trust such a world wide giant such as Virgin though.

I also didn't know that one had to have special programmes such as those you suggested to transfer data from one drive to another.

Regarding the back-up of music, I was referring to music that is on CDs that I have purchased, and not what has been downloaded from the internet.

[Ethel]

You don't need special programs to create backups, in fact Windows provides these functions and many hard drives you buy will have it's own software.

You should have no problems uploading your own cds to any storage medium, whether it be Virgin or another hard drive.

Windows back up facility:
http://www.pchell.com/support/synctoy.shtml

[anotheoldgit]

Ethel

Thank you once again as always.

V stuff???????

Oh!dear,oh! dear, I wish I had not bothered also, I have not got millions of photos or even thousands, but it is now on it's second day storing them. One photo for example of 1.47mb takes 4 minutes.

I have been through to India again to try and explain I want to cancel this service, and delete all the photos that are in storage somewhere, but alas with no success.

I think now I will have to send Virgin an email, but I don't hold out any chances of it being answered in the very near future.

[fo3nix]

Special programs: you don't need them. As Ethel says, Windows can do it all (you can just drag and drop files to backup). But other programs like the one I mentioned above does it more intelligently. For example, you can just press one button to backup a folder, and it'll go through and see which files in that folder have been updated, so will only copy those files across (not the entire directory).

Trusting Virgin: I'm a bit cautious with security stuff. Unless I know people working in that company (high up) so can trust the company, then I don't trust it. I have no idea if Virgin gives loads of its data to MI5 for counter-terrorism use, or anything like that.