Back Up Reminder

No, this is not a reminder to turn back your clocks. When they were reminding us of that in church last night, for some reason it made me think that I've been putting off backing up my computer for a while.

PLEASE, remember to back up your data from time to time. Several years ago we lost more information than I could ever explain because we didn't have a good back up procedure in place. We now have a USB external hard drive that I use to back up our data as well as to archive our photos and our music.

This doesn't have to be a difficult or expensive task either.

Google "USB Hard Drive" and you'll get tons of options. I'll guess that 500GB drives will run easily under $100. And, as the description suggests, it is a USB connection so it is no more troublesome than plugging in your IPod or camera.

We are pretty good at backing ourselves up a couple times each year and we store the back up drive in a different building than where we keep our computers. That way, if we have the tragedy of a fire or flood, we should never lose both the computer and the backed up data.

These days you can use online storage if you like. I know it is secure but I'm not to the point where I'm ready to do that. I do have a friend who uses that method and he says that because it is basically available every time he goes on the web he backs up more often. That's a pretty strong argument for using web based back up. We used to have a tape back up built in to computer but one of the tapes somehow corrupted and with only one tape we found ourselves leaving the tape in the computer all the time. Basically we were not protected if something catastrophic happened to the building like a fire.

Ultimately, you have lots of options. Many being pretty affordable.
Please do not put off this important task.
Take it from me, learning the hard way is a major drag!