Backup Your Files

I used to find myself very guilty of not performing the backup ritual on a regular basis - until the nightmare from last summer. Nearly all of us put this task on the back burner, promising ourselves we will "do it tomorrow”. We never think that we could wake up tomorrow morning, get that cup of coffee, sit down at the computer to start our day, and discover the computer will not boot. Well, there goes that website you worked on until midnight last night to get finish for your newest client. Those hours and designs are gone forever.

Even if you have a new computer or hard drive it can still happen to you. There are several causes of data loss other than the hard drive crashing. You could get a virus, which happened to me and my new hard drive last summer (The nightmare from last summer.), a power surge, (Yes, surge protectors can fail.), or a lightning strike. Sometimes simple unforeseen things can wipe out your system. A friend of mine's new puppy chewed through the power cord on her laptop, and her computer system was fried. Don't worry. The puppy is fine but tends to back away from power cords now.

I learned my lesson since last summer's nightmare. I back up almost every night, not everything, just the work I have completed or started that day.

There are many types of external storage, Zip Drives, External Hard Drives, DVD-RW, CD-RW and online backup storage such as Iomega iStorage. When you choose external storage, you need to weigh cost and convenience against the amount of information you plan to back up. I work between My Zip Drive and my CD-RW, depending on what I am backing up.

For example I have all of my Websites on CD-RW, one for each site. All of my Templates from BasicTemplates are on Zips. You need to do what works for you. Just make sure you backup! Save yourself from a nightmare that you can prevent, and get on with that new design and life!

// posted by BasicAnn on 6/13/2005 09:16:00 AM / Permanent Link