Back it up

Hi All,

Yesterday morning the operating system on my less-than-one-year-old laptop crashed. My laptop is now at the repair shop and I'm working on a borrowed computer. Why am I telling you my sad story? Because I'm here to remind you of the importance of backing up your data. Fortunately, I use an online back-up service and had run a manual backup the day before so I didn't lose any data! It will take hours to rebuild the laptop and add all the software that I use, but that's just time. I am far less stressed about this than I would be if I had lost data.

Backing up our computers is like flossing... we know we should do it, but we get lazy or sloppy about it and don't. Do yourself a favor... subscribe to an online back-up service, or buy an external drive (if you simply need to back-up documents, an inexpensive jump drive should work fine). Then commit to use it! If you sign on with an online system (this is typically not expensive), then you will need to check occasionally and be sure that the automatic back-up is working. And obviously if you use an external drive, you need to then use it!

One additional strategy.... when I am working on something that is super important, I email the draft to myself when I am done for the day or evening, just to be sure I have it in one more place. If you don't currently have the extra coin to subscribe to a service or buy a drive, this is a good solution -- mail documents to yourself and you'll always have them in your inbox.

Back it up! You'll pat yourself on the back later... if something goes wrong with your computer, you at least have the security of knowing that your data is safe.

Tune in tomorrow for Saturday morning cartoon.

cheers
H