Originally Posted By: haertig

Anybody - do you have and ideas how to handle stuff like this where one spouse is the computer guru and the other is just a basic user? What happens if the guru bites it? You might have the best backup system on the planet, but if the spouse doesn't know how to locate and use it, they're kind of out of luck.


I have been ubergeek for some 40 years so my software choice is a bit unique. My goto software is a very old text based program system called emacs which is the current version of the old unix text editor. There is an add on called orgmode. It creates the text files with the filetype of .org

org is written in lisp (a list processing language) which allows me to customize nearly all aspects of the program

This method uses plain text files for most data storage. Images are either .pdf, .jpg or other similar methods that use common software.

Data is stored on a microSD card on the computer, a USB attached hard drive and a network attached hard drive on my daughters home network, providing the remote site backup.

The main advantage is that all files are just plain text files. My wife can open the resulting files with almost any editor. Using the search tool she can locate any data.

Each subject resides in its own file and so it is relatively easy to locate the needed data.

My computers are all linux and my wife uses chrome. I format one series of microUSB chips in a format that can be used by both systems so she can just insert the chip and access the data.

There are more aspects to consider like encryption etc., but I will not lengthen this already long post by discussing those.

Works for us and over the years has proven to be a simple to use and robust system.
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...........From Nomad.........Been "on the road" since '97