I'm in data hell

[Kim]

As webmasters, we have a large amount of data on our PCs - contacts, code snippets, usernames, passwords, affiliate details, bookmarks... the list goes on.

Can anyone tell, what's the best software to organize all this in a fairly central place.

I don't like the MS stuff much, I prefer something that is secure and will run on XP and KDE or Gnome. Right now I use about 4 different apps on Windows and 3 on KDE. It gets a nightmare to find something quickly.

Anybody got any thoughts?

[Jensen]

would be interresting to know..

[Linkster]

For most sensitive information I actually write it down in a large address/organizer type thingie - knowing the quality of computers and their ability to catch on fire in the middle of the night, I dont trust that info left on a hard drive even with backups

[Magix]

Originally Posted by Linkster

For most sensitive information I actually write it down in a large address/organizer type thingie - knowing the quality of computers and their ability to catch on fire in the middle of the night, I dont trust that info left on a hard drive even with backups

i must be a hell of a big organizer !

[juggernaut]

If your running KDe then I presume you will need WINE. it's the only solid program that will allow you to work on Linux with MS apps. As far as I know, best thing to do is orginze your things in XP. MS defaults to saving everything in the my documents of which you can access from Linux. You can not run any apps with out a 3rd party app. But you can still access the files and work on them from linux.
I really never understood this whole secure thing. NTFS is secure in fact XP has been the most secure OS MS has come out with. Only advantage to using a Linux based system is the way the files are accessed. IE permissons are set per file. Only advantage there is for virus protection, the virus will not penitrate any system files at it wont have the permissions.
I have worked on both OS's and in the end found it to be a waste. An OS is an OS. Linux just works differantly, it's no more secure then the user using it. I'm kind of shocked that you are using this OS and did not know 1) you can access your xp files and make short cuts to the MY docs folder 2) you did not know about wine.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Kim

...Can anyone tell, what's the best software to organize all this in a fairly central place...

Due to the critical nature I deliberately do NOT want it all in a centralized location. The most critical info, anything I can't retrieve from the source, is written down or printed out and filed. The rest I have on redundant backups in more than one physical location.

[ecchi]

Linklister, Toby, etc. Never heard of external hard drives? You can download on them and move them to another building. Or this new thing called the Internet? I FTP my stuff to a secondary location that isn't even in the same country as me once a week (except when I forget). Then there is them writable DVDs, don't use them myself (2 backups at home, a third in a different building and a fourth in a different country is enough for me), but a friend of mine has backup DVDs all over the place.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Linklister, Toby, etc. Never heard of external hard drives?

I have a 200GB external drive that is my primary backup. Other than web sites and content, the rest of my critical info easily fits on a CD.

[ArtWilliams]

File share your XP data with your Linux box then you can backup all your data with Amanda, an open source back up program for Linux. Amanda will let you send the data to another server, a tape drive or whatever.

---art

[juggernaut]

Originally Posted by juggernaut

I'm kind of shocked that you are using this OS and did not know 1) you can access your xp files and make short cuts to the MY docs folder 2) you did not know about wine.

Sorry about this. I misread your post. If your just looking for a central place to store eveything then I would stick with just keeping stuff in the My Docs folders. Set your permissions correctly and it will be secure. Run a AT job to zip it, encript it and password protect it. Then push the zip/gzip via ftp someplace. I was just reading the other day there are online storage houses that for a fee you can transfer your data to them as back up. Don't know how good they are but know they can be pricy. But that's only if you are looking to back up. I know most ftp programs can be scheduled to do a transfer for you. If you have enough space on a remote server, you can toss it up scheduled. Other then that I'm not sure what the other apps you are using, what for and how they relate to central access to your data other then possibly default saving locations in the apps themselves. From your post your looking to be able to access documents over two OS's should be very simple as once again Linux will open just about anything. Reading it is a whole other issue.

[Kim]

Thanks for all the info and feedback you guys. Many thanks Juggernaut,

I've now concentrated all the data on XP and only use linux for admin purposes - writing scripts, rebooting servers etc.

There's a couple of nice XP apps which are now doing the job quite well: doOrganizer from gemx is quite a professional product and good because I can put all my URLs in it with details about expiry and notes. Also all contacts, appointments, planner... All the data is saved to a sql database so getting the data out is a doddle. The other app I'm looking at is the Secure Notes Organizer from secureaction. Problem is it is really only for notes and doesn't handle all the data I need to store. Looks like I'm going to stick with doorganizer.

I've also setup a shared docs folder for sharing data files between linux and xp using SFTP. normal ftp is just not secure enough.

A bit off topic, but when I was browsing around for software, I came across WinSCP. It's a bit like linux krusader file manager. Secure and very good for managing files on a server, it and uses putty as a connector.

[goldrush]

Are your XP and linux installations on different partitions of the same disk? Set up a FAT32 partition and you can use that to share data directly, linux can't read/write NTFS reliably. I am personally a big fan of plain text files and plain text data dumps from apps that use binary file formats (or databases etc). All backed up on USB portable harddrive - set up a script that backs up your latest changes to your work, back up at the end of every day and then unplug the HD, preferably store it somewhere other than your office!

[Kim]

Thanks goldrush.

We have 2 networks, 1 is XP the other is linux with a common connector to share between the two. Data is backed up in compressed plain text 6 times a day to an off site rotating storage.