Stuff Happens, It’s Best to Be Prepared
So last night I had a dream my laptop was stolen from a restaurant. In the dream I was kind of panicky because my laptop is my livelihood. If it’s stolen, I lose lots of important stuff. It also got me to thinking, what happens if it is stolen? I know I talked about the importance of backing up before, but last night’s dream was so real, I thought I’d mention it again. Here are a couple of other tips, just in case:
Since all my work is web-based, I have about a dozen passwords to remember. I have a list of passwords in the fireproof box we use for our important papers. If you have a lot of blogs, trying using an offline editor such as Windows Live Writer. Not only will this allow you to post, well, offline, but it allow you access to all your blogs in one place. No fuss, no muss, no passwords.
Enlist the aid of flash drives. These portable devices are ever so handy. Store all of your important client info on the drives. Not only passwords, but emails, contracts, instructions – all the due diligence stuff. One writer I know has a flash drive for each client. If you maintain several blogs like me, you’ll want to also save information from advertisers and fellow bloggers. Make sure you save important links and RSS feeds too. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s not being able to find a great site because I forgot or lost the bookmark.
As long as I have access to my clients and blogs, I can deal with the rest. Backup, save important information, and keep all your blogs organized with an offline blog editor. Stuff happens, it’s best to be prepared.
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Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm under
I’ve been scared of the same thing too, recently. I can hear humming coming from inside my CPU box and I’m a little worried my HDD would give in any minute now. How can I save my bookmarks? I have, literally, a thousand or so, all of them I deem important (in my crazy mind).
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:27 pmThat’s so interesting, because I dreampt last night that my computer was taken over by a virus. It was one of those horrible ones that completely took over the machine and my words started to melt away. Then it gave commands (and taunts) in bold purple ink. Weird. But it was a good reminder to back everything up!
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:55 pmHi Deb,
Windows Live Writer? That sounds like a good program. I’ve never thought of using a program that lets me write offline. How does it work?
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 pmMariella,
There are some online backup services that are relatively inexpensive. Or use a remote drive.
The issue Mariella mentions is one reason I buy a computer about every three years or so. They do fail with use and do tend to give early warning signs. The older computers go to my kids.
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 pmYeah, I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets for this reason. Just in case something happens to the laptop or I can’t get to my computer, I can pick up my work from anywhere.
This is another reason I like Gmail - unlimited memory means that I don’t ever have to completely delete things. I can access any email I’ve sent or put in my trash. It comes in handy if something disappears off my hard drive. You know, when I accidentally erase something important, then empty my recycle bin? Happens.
I mostly worry about all the pics of my children I keep on the computer. What if they were lost? So, when I upload them, I also put the irreplaceable ones on Photobucket and, of course, I print them off through Snapfish so they will also be on my Snapfish account.
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 pmMy pictures are saved on two different computers, a flash drive, and a CD. My laptop died this summer, and I lost everything on it that wasn’t backed up — which was a lot. I’m slowly moving things to an on-line system I have through my email account. But I like the idea of setting up a gmail for business and at least forwarding all my important work emails to that account. Just another thing for the to-do list.
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:10 pmI have used Mydocsonline for many years. For $10 per quarter, it is a very secure resource. You can download your work to any computer, and also have the added capability to email files to a client from the Mydocsonline site.
http://mydocsonline.com
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:59 pmPhil,
How can I save my bookmarks and links to my flash drive? Sorry…I have no idea!
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:25 amFirst, Happy Thanksgiving!
Now for my question: I am considering using the Christmas money I get to buy a flash drive since I’ve been reading a lot about them. However, I would like to know if you can edit and re-save the files you save to a flash drive, and also, can those files be deleted one by one?
Thanks in advance to anyone with a flash drive who can answer these questions for me.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:55 amThankfully, my brother is a computer engineer so he’s saved many of my family members. He highly recommends flash drives, but also told me that if I send a copy to everything I do - all my emails, etc. to a free google email acct. that that will help protect me in the long run as well. Then if my computer does glitch, I can go to another computer and have instant access to my templates and email contacts.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:27 pmCaveat to suggestions below: Though I’m a Purdue grad, I’m no engineer. The below advice comes from my own experience, but a computer expert (I know just enough to really mess up a computer and cause technicians to roll their eyes) may have other advice. If so, listen to the computer expert. But I do think the advice below would be helpful.
Mariella,
I truly had no idea, so I just tried copying and pasting via the “explore” function. It worked for me, though you’ll want to test this on one or two unimportant bookmarks first. I have Windows XP. Have no idea if this works on other platforms. Also make sure you have a large enough flash drive to hold everything. Flashdrives are cheap, so you may want to use use just to back up favorites file.
But rather than a flashdrive, I’d recommend a backup hard drive. They’re extremely cheap and enable you to back up whole computer. However, if you have a fire, flood, etc., you’re likely to use the backup drive, too.
For photos, I’m trying Photobucket, which was recommended earlier — Great recommendation — though there may be limitations that I am unaware of.
Misti, a flash drive is really nothing more than a floppy on steroids. Anything that you could have done with a floppy or can do with your hard drive (though the flash does have space limitations) you can do on a flash drive.
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 pmI have a backup hard drive (an Iomega, which automatically backs up my hard drive every week, and which I just pushed to do it again right now, after reading this article). I’m also exploring online storage as a second backup, just in case there’s a fire or something and I lose my backup drive, too.
I used to keep a copy of my backup files at my office, but now that I work at home, I’ve lost that benefit of having the files as a second site. (Hmmm, my mother-in-law is just down the street, I should probably leave a copy there. That’d work…)
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:59 pmMariella,
I’m using Windows XP and for IE favorites, if you go to C:, Documents and Settings, then the user you sign on with, there is a folder called favorites. You can copy that to a flash drive or some other method.
I have AT&T Yahoo DSL, which I believe brings my favorites to me if I log onto another computer using that particular browser program. I did find an xml file on my computer that contained my favorites via this path:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Yahoo!\\Bookmarks.
Hope this type of info helps.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:56 amI guess I am a bit of a dinosaur here. I have a small address book. In it I list all the websites, web addresses, the email addy I gave them to contact me at, my username there, my password, and any other relevant information. Then when I change email accounts or have computer issues, I can get back up and running lickety-split. I can take my addy book with me anywhere I go. (Note: I don’t have a laptop).
With the addy book being alphabetized, it helps me to look up the appropriate website very quickly, too. I also keep my multiple email accounts in there, as well as relevant info on what accounts (my own nicknames for them) are linked to which other accounts, such as Paypal.
When you have multiple websites, blogs, email accounts, bank accounts, and other accounts, it is vital to be organized.
November 24th, 2007 at 6:13 amKitties!!!! I’ve burned up more than one laptop, so I’m very cautious now. I use thumb drives (that’s what I call them, maybe the same as a flash drive?). I have dreams of fires constantly, always have since childhood. Also, I have dreams of not remembering my high school locker combination. But anyway, because of the fire dreams I keep important belongings in a fireproof box and always have a certain sack of bigger stuff that won’t fit, as well as my laptop in its case, by the door so in case the fire dream comes true I can grab it and go. Of course, I also have to rescue three pet rabbits and a frog, so in reality I’d burn to death and wouldn’t need my laptop, but it makes me feel better to have stuff by the door.
November 24th, 2007 at 11:38 am@Phil>> Thank you so much! I’ll try that out once I figure out how to use the Explorer function.:D
@tjwriter>> I use Windows XP but I use Opera. But I think I could try and figure out where my favorites are stored with your advice. thanks!
November 24th, 2007 at 3:22 pmGood points that everyone needs to think about. I have a friend who just got her laptop stolen with all of her freelance work on it. Unfortunately no good recent backup. I wrote a full entry on my blog about this and my recommendations for doing backups in a painless manner.
November 25th, 2007 at 12:26 amThis is going to be super dorky, so bear with me…;)
I love Gmail and swear by it as well.
@Phil - Do you use laptops or PCs? I only ask, because a PC hard drive is meant to last about 7 years, especially if you get yourself a couple of nice internal Seagates. My PC is running on a prayer - I have 4 hard drives, all of which are well over 5 years old. I’m not trying to sound snotty, but I hate to see people throw their money away to Best Buy, when they can get themselves a better product for less money.
I actually built my computer (I told you all I was a dork
), and from the gathered experience of other builders, I would say the biggest problem in computers is getting yourself a bad power supply. Once that thing goes, you’ll basically fry your equipment. Yuck.
In any case, if you get a custom built computer and you don’t kick it around too much, it’ll last close to 7 years.
@everyone - I love external hard drives, but be careful with them! If you so much as look at some of those crossways, you’ll suffer data loss. If you leave them in one place, however, they won’t fail as easily.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:29 pm