After getting another powerbook at work, I was in a bit of a dilemma - I wanted the same working environment at home and at work. I looked into dot mac but could not find anything about security or what type of encryption is used to store my keychain - a file with all my passwords. With dot mac I would be uploading that file (well OS X does it for me).
Not finding any information about how safe dot mac was, I decided to give it a miss. I thought about using a USB drive and storing my home directory on that but did not like the idea of carrying around a portable HD (I hate carrying bags and seldom carry one).
It was then when I decided to get myself a iPod Photo 60GB and look for some decent syncing software. I was going to use the iPod as a hard disk and carrying around an iPod was not bad because I could listen to some kewl tunes on the train.
I tried
You Synchronize but found it unusable and too expensive for what it is. I then found
Chronosync and have been using it ever since. What I do is create an encrypted sparse disk image on the iPod (if the iPod was stolen or swallowed by a baboon I my data would be safe - because 1, The data would be encrypted or 2, would be covered in baboon poo and nobody would want to touch it.
With all the syncing back and forth, the disk image does get corrupted and I find myself making a new image about once every two months - no big deal as I always have 3 copies of data at any one time.
I sync my home directory to the disk image when I leave one environment and sync from the image in another environment.
I have not had any problems with Chronosync so far and recommend it if you need to sync and backup data.
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