Back-up the back-ups!

A timely reminder to anyone who doesn't back up their computers.

I was in the middle of editing some photos on Sunday evening when all of a sudden nothing worked anymore.It wouldn't even switch off! My husband, thankfully, has an IT background and has always made sure that we have everything backed up and with belt and braces as well and he diagnosed a damaged hard drive after much muttering.

Thanks to his planning,within 3 or 4 hours of the new disc arriving in the post all my applications etc were successfully reinstalled just as they were.

Don't put it off.You don't realise what you'll miss until you don't have it any more.

Karin

 

Excellent advice, Karin. This cannot be stressed enough.

 

And, unless the old Hard Drive is physically totally ruined, most of its contents can be retrieved. We had one crash a few years back. I fitted a new one into the PC and put the old one into a gadget called an ICY box and ran a retrieval program. I got everything back except for some reason the music. (Never did work out why that was.)
Still a Backup would save all that trouble as said.

 

It's been almost a year since I did a back-up. Thanks for the reminder

 

My usual back-up has been to burn my stuff to CDs.
Programs... I'm not concerned about too much since I can always reload them... but my photos and files are what are most important to me.
But CDs seem to be "outdated" now.
I have been saving some files to Google Drive. But the free 5GB isn't enough space. I did see that you can purchase additional space for nominal fees.
But I have reservations about all my info being "held" by someone else and have been contemplating getting an external hard-drive.
So... what method do you use to back-up your most important files?

 

Hi Cheryl,

I use a 1 tetrabyte external hard drive for this.
I keep it disconnected from my PC and laptop when not in use.

 

I do the same as Sjoerd and I also have the original ICY box where I put photos separately. Still put them on DVD's though, belt, braces and string.

 

Gosh! In the last few weeks I have come across so many who are requesting help because they're HDD has crashed and they have nothing backed. It's so easy to back up all your personal data in so many ways and if your personal data means anything to you it is an excellent idea to have more than one backup of everything.

All hope is not lost though if you don't. But you should to save the heartache of having to purchase an external or go through the process of slaving the HDD to access from another computer to retrieve the data that should have been backed up in the first place.

Another easy step to prevent total loss is to create those recovery disks if the purchase of a new computer didn't include them. I not only encourage this but also encourage anyone and everyone to clone the HDD. I have created clones with Macrium Reflect for all my versions of Windows. This link includes a few other free Apps that will work but I have found that Macrium Reflect is one of the best.

 

Thanks for the Macrium Reflect link.
I always keep my PC backed up on DVDs and flash drives. And then I backup the backups. It only takes maybe an hour to backup a 16 GB flash drive and it's so worth it. And whenever I get new stuff I back that up too.
There's no way anybody should lose data with all the cool stuff they have for backups now. Btw, this is even a bigger issue for people with SSD because they are not as reliable as HDD. Well, that's what I've been reading at the tech sites anyway.