Backing Up

Earlier this month, my computer crashed. It was not a baby crash that could be taking care of by doing the ctrl+alt+del thing or simply restarting. It was dead. All I could get to come up was one of those blue screens of death. I could not even get into safe mode to try a system restore. It was not a virus, it was hardware failure. It happens. One day my computer was working fine and the next day it was dead. I have always been a good little backer upper, so my loss of data very minimal. Basically, I am not crying right now. I lost my bookmarks, my free downloadable programs like filezilla, inkscape, and my photographers ephemeris. Nothing that can’t be replaced.

However, if I had not been good with backing up, I would crying right now. The crash was so quick and severe that I would not have been able to recover any data. So I am taking this opportunity to express to all of you the importance of backing up your data. I am vigilant with protecting my photos. They are my first priority. It would absolutely crush me if I lost them. 2nd in line is all of my digital layouts. 3rd in line is my digital scrapbooking stash. 1 and 2 are more important to me because…well, I can always buy more digital scrapbooking supplies. I might not be happy about it, but I would get over it. I would never get over losing my family photos though.

If you are not backing up, I highly recommend that you start exploring your options. Most computers have a CD or DVD burner. That is certainly a viable options. Flash drives are a great options as well. An external USB hard drive seems to be a very common back up option. We have two of them mirroring each other, because they CAN  and DO crash as well. Online back up solutions such as Mozy and Carbonite are very popular and reasonably priced as well.

If you have any questions about backing up, start a new thread over on the forum and we will all jump in to help you. But do it, do it now, think about it today. You might be sorry tomorrow.

PS. My computer is all better now. After new hardware and a software upgrades, it is better than ever.