Just a quick reminder. If you don’t have a back up disc or external hard drive or flash drive, get thee to your local office supply emporium on the double.
My life is on my laptop and the past couple of weeks have brought me computer issues of catastrophic proportions. It shuts down several times a day without warning. If I don’t save every couple of minutes, I can chance losing what I just wrote.
My fear is one of these times, it won’t turn back on again. We’re shopping around for a new machine, but in the mean time I’m saving everything I’m going to need – bookmarks, passwords, platforms and programs.
Back up, and back up often. You just never know when the "just in case" is going to happen.
If you have an iPod, it makes a great emergency backup tool as well. I think people tend to forget that.
We learned that lesson in February when our house was broken into and both of our computers were stolen. Luckily we had recently backed up the majority of our information, but it makes you realize how much vital information you keep on our computers!
Thanks Deb for that reminder! Just did the file back up now.
I’m a big fan of the flash drives, but I’m looking into online backup sites as well. Last year, I wrote an article about three college students who lost pretty much everything they had to a fire. We talked about backups and so on, and they had all been diligent about backing up their computers, but the backups were lost in the fire as well. More recently, I read a heartbreaking email on a discussion group written by a woman whose entire home was lost in a fire. She lamented the fact that her backups had been lost, and said that she could kick herself for not spending the money for an online backup. I think she said the cost averages about $50-60 per year. It’s worth looking into.
I try to keep very little vital information on my computer because of that. A thief can take that information and use it for his or her own misdeeds – something I keep trying to tell my parents who insist on using password managers so that they don’t have to remember them.
Storing passwords, any personal information, bookmarking your bank accounts – you are opening yourself up to a major headache.
I automatically save copies of my written work and send it to my Yahoo email. I have all emails I use written in my address book and saved on a disk which is kept in my safe.
Bank account information is memorized.
Your best prevention against computer crashes is to keep your computer in great shape. Use anti-virus and run regular scans, have it defragged on a regular schedule, run spyware/malware checks regularly, etc. Just as you would take your car for a tune-up and yourself for annual doctor check-ups, you should do the same for your computer.
If you’re backing up on disc make sure to take them out of the machine. One of my computers died with the most recent backup still inside. It was a real pain getting it out.
I use Carbonite, an online back up service. That way, I don’t have to worry about theft or fire, and I can back up the info anywhere I am in the world with the service.
Best of all, I don’t even have to think about it; its’ done automatically. I did have to retrieve files once and it was seamless.
It’s also good for if you accidently {ahem} delete something you really need.
Another tip is to know how to work your system of backup. I got a flash drive to store my articles, images and spreadsheets. I went back to look something up and it couldn’t be found. I goofed somewhere, who knows how.
It is a sad thing when a person who makes her living with the computer is computer illiterate.
*off to sit in a corner now*
When I saw the title for this post I thought it was going to tell us who won the external hard drive — I didn’t expect it to be a story of real life angst. Sorry for your troubles.
Thanks for the reminder …
I’m always saving and backing up because I had a similar experience with my laptop last summer, although I didn’t lose quite as much.
Have you heard of sugarsync.com? It is a web-based back up system. You pay a small fee and you can back up all your computers. Then you can access your files from anywhere as long as you have web access.
Another great web-based back up system is Mozy. You get 2gb for free and unlimited for $5/month. Similar to sugarsync, it sounds like.
Lori, thanks for listing that web-based back up service. I use flash drives a lot, but am also considering an online tool so that my onfo is protected and I can easily access it from anywhere without worry! Great post!
Be sure to back up on an external drive.
Windows often now partitions your hard drive and so you think everything’s safe because it’s backed up but a fried hard drive is a fried hard drive as I so painfully learned just the other week. Luckily I have tons of techy friends who were able to recover my data AND it was the week after I’d submitted my manuscript. Otherwise I’d have been freaking out even more than I did.
I use a double back-up system. My primary protection is Apple’s “Time Machine” and a 250 gb external drive. Mozy gets my vote as well. You set the parameters and forget about it. All your important files are stored off site. One feature I like is that if something happens and your backups aren’t being completed, Mozy will send you an alert.
You can email files to yourself to back up individual works in progress.
Last year I had a tech summer of disaster. My computer, which was still under warranty, had to be sent back to the manufacturer five times for repair, and they kept wiping out the hard drive to try to fix it (and no, they never did and I ended up giving up and getting a new computer–different brand, of course). I got used to keeping as little stuff as possible stored on my hard drive. I have most of my personal items from the old computer on a flash drive and never even bothered moving it onto the new one. I keep bookmarks on Google and store work in progress on google docs. I also email documents to myself, as Adam suggested. I used to be so trusting…now I’m not.
I’m coming in a little late on this issue, but have another permutation worth thinking about – it isn’t just about saving your data. If your computer crashes or there’s another disaster, you still need to be able to get *at* your data while the computer is in the shop/being replaced. Online storage is excellent for this, unless your data is for a specific program, such as Lotus Organizer. I found this out the hard way last winter when my mother board crashed. Everybody has Word and Excel, but my file database was useless because it was Access. Same with the Organizer, which had all my deadlines.
Anne B.
BUY A MACBOOK!!!!!!