On December 28, 2008 my main computer crashed. The hard drive crashed totally beyond repair.
I was devastated. I am a stickler about backing up all my important files, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It was years of work down the drain, or at least that’s what it felt like, even though I didn’t lose any data. What I lost was the time and effort of installing all my programs, getting the settings tweaked just right, and the most devastating loss of all was my email.
Although I’m always backing up my files, at least at the end of every productive working day, I rarely gave thought to backing up my email, because I never thought I’d have a total hard drive meltdown. medications online The last backup of it I had was over 9 months old. Nine months of lost correspondence, with everyone from friends to business clients and everything in between.
Another thing I am horrible about is user names and passwords. I always have a file that I add the most important of these to, but I rarely deem anything important enough to bother adding it to my file. My browser always saves this information, generic cialis 10mg so now that’s all gone too. And anyone who spends as much time on the internet as I do, knows how quickly you build up a great store of sites that require a user name and password. I must have hundreds of sites that I use on a regular basis that require them.
Many years ago I used tape drives to do complete system backups. After years of never needing those backups, my tape drive kicked the bucket. Instead of replacing it, I turned to external hard drives. I have over a dozen of them now, all neatly sitting in a row with labels as to what they contain, all hooked up to USB hubs and easily accessible at anytime. It’s so conveinent, I just reach over and click the switch for the one I need to access, and in seconds I have all the files I need. This has been my back up solution for the last five years or so and it’s never failed me yet, except in the fact that I’ve only bothered to back up my files, instead of doing complete backups. (Another reason I love this is that I can switch computers too. If I want to access the files on my laptop, it’s simply switching the USB cord from one computer to the other.)
So what’s your favorite back up method, and why?
