That’s the question I ask myself whenever I sit down at my computer. It’s what keeps me sitting at my computer even when I’m exhausted. A few minutes is all it takes to back something up again.
I once had my computer stolen a week before my manuscript was due in New York. Because I’d backed it up to my IPod, I was saved. All the other saved versions – CD and flash drive – had been stolen as well.
Now? I’m slightly paranoid, but my life is on my computers.
I back my desktop with Carbonite.
I back up my desktop to a separate hard drive.
I back up my home network to Carbonite as well.
I back up non-personal files on my network on Dropbox.
Once a week, I back up my Dropbox folder to a flash drive.
I archive my flash drives once a month and begin using a new one. I put the flash drives into my offsite security.
If you keep anything on your computer, I urge you to be redundant in your backups. Malware can destroy a backup file or mechanical problems can mess up a flash drive. A cloud service (like Dropbox) can have a security issue or Denial of Service attack.
You probably don’t have to be as paranoid as I am, but I’d never count on one kind of backup as being good enough.
A good point!!
Great idea!
I download all my pictures from my camera on the computer then delete them from my camera. When our computer was attacked by a virus last week, I was so scared that I was going to lose all my pictures, knowing that most of them had no other copy. Thankfully, the guy was able to save everything but I will say that as soon as we got the computer back, all my pictures went onto a disk.
This is all great advice, but I just do not know how to do all that. I live in a small town and there is no tech help here. I will try to butt kick myself into the 21st C and get tutored on this subject. Helen in Ark.
I have a brand new laptop and I really need to do something about backing my files. I need to learn how to do all of this first! ;o
One can never be paranoid enough. Backups are necessary. My son’s Mac was stolen a couple of years ago. He lives in a townhouse and had left the second floor window open slightly. (He was asleep on the third floor.) Someone broke into the second floor window and stole his computer. He had backed up his files and because it was a Mac, they were able to set up his files just like he had them when he bought a new one. I’m no techie, but there is a way this can be done with a Mac. After that, he locked everything up tightly at night and put in a state-of-the-art security system. Sometimes, I guess we all have to learn the hard way. Protect your computers, People. They are our lives!