8 Essential Tools For The Digital Hoarder

Tip of the Day: If you want to free up more space on your hard drive, useCCleaner. It deletes various temporary files that you don't need -- no sense hoarding those. 8 Essential Tools For The Digital Hoarder by James Bruce Hello. My name is James, and I have a hoarding problem. Yes – I'm a digital hoarder – and my hard drive was so full I had to buy a 4TB NAS. Movies, music, photos, eBooks, stock footage — I just know I'll get around to watching, listening, reading or making use of them someday. Without the proper tools (or counselling, probably) a collection like that can quickly grow out of hand. But I'm not here to judge – no, I'm going to enable you. These tools should help, at least until you realise it's time to purge yourself of these meaningly virtual things. If your hoarding is more physical in nature, check out Delicious Library – the ultimate OS X tool for cataloguing real things, from books and gadgets to DVDs and literally anything with a barcode. It'll even help you loan those things out to friends, which will then give you just a little more space and an excuse to buy some more things, before you realise that you're only buying things in order to fill an emotional void in your life. But I digress (and you need help). Text: Evernote Evernote, as the name alludes, is great at keeping notes — articles with embedded images, plaintext code snippets, random ideas you just had to write down — around forever. Retrieval of those notes is then just a search query away, but you can make the task easier by tagging and classifying notes into different notebooks. Bonus features include the ability to access those notes from anywhere in the world, sync across devices, and even perform text recognition on scanned images. A basic service is provided for free, and I still haven't hit the storage limit. If this sounds like something you could MakeUseOf, then go download our completely free Evernote Guide – and then store that guide in Evernote. Oh, how meta. Articles: Pocket Evernote can handle articles just fine, but if you literally just want to save your favourite articles from the web, then Pocket –formerly known as Read It Later – may be a better choice for you. With integration into hundreds of apps like RSS readers and the obligatory bookmarklet, Pocket makes it easy to clip and store articles for reading later. It has a beautiful visual interface, unlike the sometimes overwhelming text of Evernote. Inspiration: Pinterest Pinterest seemed to pop up overnight from nowhere, and is now the digital tool for "scrapbooking", or collecting little snippets of inspiration from around the web. The concept is simple – find an interesting image, pin it to your own personal boards, and it'll link back to the original site. Boards can be public or private, and you can follow others to be alerted when new pins are added. And – wait for it – we have a free Pinterest Guide, too! eBooks and Magazines: Calibre Calibre isn't the best looking of apps — it's certainly more functional — but as well as serving as a catalog of your eBooks, it also interfaces directly with any eBook readers you have to facilitate the process of syncing libraries. Again, all the key features critical to maintaining a huge library of horded eBooks is clear and present, from book covers to meta search and classification. Warning: some people get pretty emotional about the fact Calibre manages its own directory structure. If you're the kind of person that hates not being able to manage mp3s on the iPhone, Calibre probably isn't for you. Luckily for you, we've also got a completely free Calibre Guidethat you can download or read online. I bet you didn't see that one coming. Movies and TV Shows: Plex I'm a big fan of Plex – it is, in my opinion the ultimate media cataloging app around, and it's free. It's both functional — it will automatically scan your movie files, determine the content with good accuracy and grab covers and artwork for you — and a beauty to behold, unlike its XBMC cousin which seems like it was repeatedly hit with the ugly stick by Linux programmers. The only complication to Plex is that it requires both a serverand client to function. The server catalogs your terabytes of media, while the client accesses this over the local network. You can run the client on the same machine if you only want this for your desktop, but the overhead of having the server run all the time is something to keep in mind. Adding files couldn't be easier – just drag them into the correct directories, and Plex will automatically detect the changes. Bonus features: a bookmarklet that allows you to save YouTube and other web videos to view on your Plex client later, and the ability to share your media hoard with friends (they can stream your media). And wouldn't you know it – we have a free Plex Guide too. Really, I shock myself sometimes with the awesome amount offree guides we publish. Seriously – you should check them all out. Hardware: Synology Disktation NAS If you're serious about your digital hoarding – and you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't – you need to think seriously about the possibility of drives failing. I speak from experience – I used to have piles of external bare drives lined up in my bookcase, each holding a few hundred gigabytes of something important. One day, the inevitable happened – I plugged one in, it started clicking menacingly, and wouldn't read. I even tried the freezer trick (yep, that one really doesn't work). I didn't have backups, because I assumed wrongly that I wouldn't be so attached to something so meaningless as crap I've downloaded over the years; but actually, I was. It was devastating, and I learnt my lesson – don't just backup your core system in case of emergency, backup your data too! The ultimate backup solution (or one of them, since youtechnically need three), is a NAS with RAID function. The Synology has a hybrid RAID solution that allows you to mix and match drive sizes, so it will always give you the optimal amount of space with a one or two disk redundancy – it doesn't matter if any of the disks break as long as you replace them quickly. Traditional RAIDs generally need to use drives paired to the same size, which can be costly when it comes to upgrading – with the Synology, you just need to buy a single drive that's bigger, and replace the smallest (or broken one). The hardware itself is on the premium side, but you're also paying for the world class DSM operating system that powers it. Most NAS devices will just give you shared folders – the Synology gives you an app store. Read my full review here (sorry, the giveaway has since finished; perhaps you should subscribe to the newsletterso you don't miss out next time!) There's even a Plex server app for DSM. Encryption: TrueCrypt If you're hoarding more sensitive files like leaked government documents that show the NSA is recording everything you do (totally unlikely, right?), you probably want a certain degree of privacy. TrueCrypt is the tool you're looking for. In a previous article, I showed you how to create a hidden partition with TrueCrypt within an encrypted partition for extreme privacy – leaving you with what's called plausibly deniable encryption. In case your drives are examined and questions asked about why you've encrypted them, you can supply the fake password to reveal a cache of private data that you planned for in advance – the actual encrypted data is then stored within the free space of that initial volume. In some countries you can go to jail for not revealing your password (the UK, for one). Passwords and Software Licences:1Password 1Password is cross platform, integrates with your browser, and can even generate strong passwords for you. It fills in login forms so you don't have to, and makes securing your hoard of digital accounts quite painless. Now you just have to make sure the password you use for 1Password is itself quite secure. Bonus feature: it doesn't just do passwords – it's a secure way to store software licences and other personal data like bank accounts. On the downside, it's a little pricey – $49.99 for the Mac or Windows versions. If you don't need to store software licences, look into LastPass instead, which offers a free plan or you can get a full year of premium service through our MakeUseOf Rewards program. To Conclude… Some people say digital hoarding is a psychological problem – but it's only a problem if you can't manage it. With the right tools, hoarding is simply another way of saying "always having the data you need at your fingertips". And unlike real life hoarding – yes, I'm looking at you Mr 500 DVDs – bytes don't take up real space. I think that's a pretty extensive list, but if you're holding on to more ideas for hoarding tools, please share in the comments so we can all keep our digital addictions under control. Share This Article Now: Comments How Did You Like This Newsletter? Have a tech question? Ask us on MakeUseOf Answers! Do You Use BitTorrent? [MakeUseOf Poll] Razer Hydra Review and Giveaway Is Amazon Prime A Good Deal? The Beginner's Guide to Digital Journaling Bluehost: Powering Millions of Websites Exclusive prices for MakeUseOf readers! Only $3.95 per month on a 3-year plan. Read More Articles Advertise on MakeUseOf Share button graphics by ChethStudios.net: Icon Pack and Google+ Icons MakeUseOf Limited, 105 Collingwood Road, Colchester CO3 9BB, Essex / UK

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jack.minardi.org : Replace Dropbox with BitTorrent Sync and a Raspberry Pi

July 2013

Notes Everywhere

source

I like to take long running notes, jotting down an idea here and there when one pops up. I never know which devices I will have with me, so I like to have these notes synced across all of them.

Previously I had been using the Chrome plugin QuickNote which is a light weight interface on top of the diigo cloud service. I had been using it for about two years and never had a problem until a few days ago. I somehow managed to lose about three months of edits. I still have not quite shaken that feeling of despair knowing I will never get my data back, but it did finally force me to beef up my note-syncing system. While I will primarily be using this setup to sync notes, it is by no means limited to only text files.

Enter BitTorrent Sync

BitTorrent Sync is a free utility that uses the bittorrent protocol to keep folders in sync across devices. It can be used with OS X, Windows, Android and Linux. It is not however open source, which might be a deal breaker for some. But if this isn't too big a pill for you to swallow, with a little bit of work you can use btsync as a free syncing solution.

While Dropbox requires you to keep a copy of your data on their servers, btsync never requires your data to inhabit a device you do not own. This is nice for security, but it means to sync between two devices they both need to be online at the same time. That is where the Raspberry Pi comes in. You can use the Pi as a node in your sync network, so a change to a file on any device will sync with the Pi and then other devices will get the change when they come online.

First we will set up the Pi as the central server and then we will connect our devices to it. (It is important to note however that the Pi is not a special "server" node, it is just a regular node like any other device.)

Installing BitTorrent Sync on the Raspberry Pi

NOTE: I am using Raspbian Wheezy, but I suspect these ideas will translate to other operating systems.

You need to grab the ARM build of BitTorrent Sync:

mkdir ~/.btsync && cd ~/.btsync  wget http://btsync.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/btsync_arm.tar.gz  tar -xfv btsync_arm.tar.gz  

Unless you have a large SD in your Pi you will probably want to use an external drive for your sync location. I will be using a USB thumb drive. You may need to format your thumb drive as EXT4 if you are having issues. (WARNING! This will erase all data on your drive)

df -h                               # find your drive here, e.g. `sda1`  sudo umount /dev/sda1               # replace sda1 with your drive name !  sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L BTSync  # replace sda1 with your drive name !  

Now all you have to do is launch the btsync application and you will be up and running!

cd ~/.btsync  sudo ./btsync  # can be killed with `sudo killall btsync`  

If you see the following output btsync is properly running.

BitTorrent Sync forked to background. pid = 3003  

Navigate your browser to Your-Pi-IP-Address:8888/gui to manage the btsync process. To add the thumb drive select "Add Folder" and navigate to /media/BTSync. You will need to generate a secret as this is the first time you are adding the folder.

Other Devices

Now go download the Android app and/or the desktop app and connect them using the secret you just generated It's that simple! Any change on any device will be synced across all online devices. If you keep your Pi online it will store and push the most up to date content as your other devices go on and off line.

Extra Credit

Start at Boot

You may want to set btsync to start when you boot your Raspberry Pi. To do that we will place a script in /etc/init.d/ and then register it with update-rc.d.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/btsync  

Paste the following code in the script

#! /bin/sh  # /etc/init.d/btsync  #    # Carry out specific functions when asked to by the system  case "$1" in  start)      /home/pi/.btsync/btsync      ;;  stop)      killall btsync      ;;  *)      echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/btsync {start|stop}"      exit 1      ;;  esac    exit 0  

Then change the permissions, test, and register it to run at boot:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/btsync  sudo /etc/init.d/btsync start       # test that the script starts  sudo /etc/init.d/btsync stop        # test that the script stops  sudo update-rc.d btsync defaults  

Password Protect Web Interface

If you expose your web interface to the outside world (or if you don't trust your friends) you are going to want to password protect it. This can be done with a btsync config file passed to the executable at runtime with the --config flag. First, use btsync to generate a sample config file, modify it to fit your needs, and restart the process.

cd ~/.btsync  ./btsync --dump-sample-config > btsync.conf  # browse the sample config file and change what you want  sudo killall btsync  sudo ./btsync --config btsync.conf  

HINT: Use jsonlint to validate your config file if btsync complains. Also make sure to modify the /etc/init.d/btsync script to use the config file as well.