Issue 633 • 8 – 21 June 2022 53BACK UP AND SYNCHRONISE BETTER
Enter three unrelated words as your password in OpenPuff then select your filethose who know there’s another file
hidden inside will be able to extract it
and read its contents.
The tool you need to do this is called
OpenPuff (www.snipca.com/42041 –
click ‘Download binary for Windows/
Linux’ at the top of the page). Install and
launch it, then click Hide on the first
screen. Enter three unrelated words in
the three boxes top left (^1 in our
screenshot) to create a password, then
click Browse^2 and select the file you
want to hide. Finally, click Add^3 and
choose the image or images you want to
hide your file inside. Your image(s) must
be larger than the file you want to hide
inside it. The red box at the bottom won’t
turn green^4 until you’ve chosen a large
enough image, or added enough smaller
images to accommodate your file.
Finally, click ‘Hide Data!’ and choose
the folder where you want to save it. This
way, OpenPuff can create a new copy of
your image and its hidden contents, so
the original won’t be amended. The result
can be opened for viewing – as an image- in a regular image viewer.
To extract your hidden file, launch
OpenPuff again, but this time click
Unhide on the first screen. Enter the
same three words you used for your
password, then click Add Carriers and
select the output image (or images)created when hiding your file.
If you used more than one image,
make sure you select them in the same
order here. Now click ‘Unhide!’ and
specify where you want the extracted
file to be saved.1
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Synchronise your folders
Synchronising folders means you’ll
always have a current copy of your
files that you can disconnect and take
with you should you need to work
away from your main machine. You can
set up synchronisation using the free
personal edition of Synchredible
(www.snipca.com/42053).
Make sure your external drive is
connected and, on the first screen, select
the folder you want to back up by
clicking the folder icon below Folder 1,
and the folder to which you want to
synchronise its contents by clicking the
folder icon below Folder 2. We’re
synchronising our Documents folder
to an empty external drive, which is
connected as D:(^1 in our screenshot).
Click ‘Next’, then specify how the
synchronisation should be handled. You
can sync just from Folder 1 to Folder 2 by
clicking the left-hand tick box^2. If you
do, any file you add to or delete from
Folder 1 will be added to or deleted from
Folder 2, but anything you do to Folder 2
will have no effect on Folder 1. Ticking
only the right-hand box^3 does the
opposite, so operations you perform on
Folder 2 will be reflected in Folder 1.
However, we want to keep the folders
fully synchronised at all times, which ishow online-storage services like Dropbox
behave, so we’ve ticked both boxes.
Click ‘Next’ twice, then optionally
specify whether Synchredible should
ignore any specified file types, such as
large downloads that would quickly eat
into your available space. Click the Exclude
tab, followed by Add, then select ‘Manualfilter’ in the dropdown menu. Specify the
extension (such as *.iso to exclude all files
with an iso extension) or folder (such as
/backups/ for a backups folder inside
Folder 1, if it exists) that you want to
exclude.
Click ‘Next’ again, then expand the
‘Synchronization on changes’ sectionEither tick one box to sync in one direction, or both to keep them fully synchronised2 3
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