I have a tough computer. That’s an understatement, considering what the bugger has been through in its short life—water spillage (a whole bottle), falling from a moving vehicle (twice), and a constant barrage of key-pulling, food particles, and random punches of frustration.
It’s loyal. It’s trusty. Which is why I never quite felt the need to back up my data. Who does, until they lose all of it?
About six months ago, however, I had a dream that I had a hard drive failure and lost everything. A few days later, a woman in my writer group said she’d lost a novel she’d worked almost a year on to a computer crash. She stopped writing for about six months after that. And on the very same day I heard on a radio show about an online data backup service. Since all these things happened in the span of a week, I took it as a sign, and spent $50 (that I didn’t have at the time) on the online backup service.
And what do you know? Three days ago, I had a hard drive failure and lost everything. But, and this is what I’m completely amazed about, barring a couple of e-mails and a song I downloaded, I really lost nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is now a full day after I got my fixed hard drive back, and I’ve downloaded almost all my data back to its original location.
So if you’re lazy about back-ups, consider this your sign, and go do it. And if you don’t like backing up constantly, consider automatic online systems.
(ETA: I just realized was rudely reminded that it’s Halloween. Well, if losing your data isn’t scary, I don’t know what is. Boo!)
Thursday, 1. November 2007
Yup, making back ups is essential. I have learned that the hard way after having had three hard drive crashes in just four years. As a photographer I need to back up vast amounts of data, and with the slow internet connections offered in India an online service is not an option. I use external harddrives and a software (in my case Heatsoft Automatic Synchronizer) to automatically sync data between various drives. In this way I can program a scheduler to automatically copy new files to the external harddrives at a specific time every night while I’m sleeping, and even receive a confirmation by email (which I can check as I wake up) that the back up was done successfully! This routine offers great peace of mind plus saves me a lot of time and hassle. However, if you’re a writer who mainly needs to back up smaller text files etc (or have a really fast internet connection), an online service is probably better as you can access your files from any connected computer.
One should really make back ups daily of everything. It’s not a question of IF a drive will crash but WHEN.
Thursday, 1. November 2007
I am the queen of letting it go. My beloved laptop and I have had a kindered relationship for the past 3 years and all of a sudden it has decided to boot me from my wireless network. I have spent the past 3 days trying to get that thing to work. I realized something in the process……it is a sign that I spend way too much time on the internet and not enough time writing. Everything else on the computer is working just fine…just no internet connection. Backing everything up today–your post is the final warning! Luckily, I have my trusty old desktop so at least I can ease my internet withdrawal symptoms until I fix my problem.
Thursday, 1. November 2007
Fred, the online back-up service does take time, I’ll admit, but only the first time. Once all your data is online, it only changes the files that have been edited. You work with huge files, so I guess it still might be a problem for you.
Sun, one of my goals for 2008 is to go a month without Internet. It can be done! I’ve seen people do it! I can do it, too! I can. I really can. I so can.