The Pogoplug is an absolutely wonderful file sharing device and I've gotten pretty addicted to using it during my tests.  I especially love listening to my music from anywhere over the Internet and being able to upload or download my files without having to store them on my mobile devices.

However, love is blind as they say, and there's something about the Pogoplug that's easy to forget... it's not a backup device.  Remember, all the Pogoplug does is share data on your USB hard drive over the Internet, it doesn't protect it.  As such, you may very well want to routinely back up the files on your Pogoplug connected drive to a local hard drive or other external storage.

For Mac OS X users, there's a plethora of third party applications just waiting to be tested with the Pogoplug, but many if not most of them will cost you some coin.  Fortunately for all us Mac users, there's a recession-approved method of easily backing up your files that is not only elegant but simple to set up - and built right in to OS X.

Step 1: Download the Free Automator Workflow

On Apple's website, a utility entitled "Backup Folder 1.0" is provided as freeware.  Head on over to download the package before we begin.  Once you unzip the file, you'll see a file with a ".action" extension as well as an additional directory, as seen above.  Only concern yourself with the Action for now.

Step 2: Import the "Backup Folder" Action into Automator

Now, you need to install, or "import," the Backup Folder action into Automator... so the program knows how to perform the action you're about to command it to do.

Simply run Automator, select File => Import Action, and choose the action included.  Now, Automator will recognize what to do when you open the included workflow.

Step 3: Configure the Workflow

Now, you'll need to open up the workflow.  Basically, the workflow combines the backup action you installed in the previous step with a file choosing action, enabling you to select two folders - one as the source folder, and the other as the destination folder.  Only files that have been changed will be backed up with this handy workflow.

You can easily add your Pogoplug drive as the first "folder," or even an individual folder within the Pogoplug, but not multiple folders.  Because of this, I've chosen to just back up the whole thing, which you're probably wanting to do anyway.

In the second action, ensure that you have the backup and destination folders set correctly, as you see above.  The first folder (Pogoplug) will backup to the second folder (my other external drive.)

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