How Are You Protecting Your Stuff?
It’s yours. You care about it. You worked hard on it. You can’t afford to lose it! Most of what you store in your computer cannot be recreated quickly and often not at all. Can you take those baby pictures of your 20 year old again? Did you print out all of your creative work? Do you have those recordings of your Dad’s voice someplace safe?
Protect Your Stuff!!!
Just because we have all of this technology at our fingertips, does not mean your stuff is safe. You need a plan!
You can protect your valuables in the computer in many ways.
1. Pray a lot!
2. Hope nothing goes wrong!
3. Put off the Question
Or
4. Backup your stuff to the cloud.
5. Backup tour stuff offsite (with someone else)
Or
6. Backup your files on external drives
7. Store periodic backups (away from your location)
8. Try and copy your important items manually.
Obviously I have my preferences, but please consider this advice.
Numbers 1 through 3, are just asking for fate to rear its ugly head. Doing nothing is not an option. Even if you don’t think you have anything important, you still need some things you have in your computer.
Options 4 and 5 mean putting your valuables in someone else’s hands, The “Cloud” is simply geek-speak for a computer owned by someone else, located somewhere you don’t know, And subject to the whims of the providers, and the winds of their fates.
Choices 6, 7 and 8 depend on you. External hard drives can be run on a schedule, which reduces the thinking effort to your backups. However, that means that they are only as safe as your workspace (home, office, etc). Moving your backups offsite adds another layer of protection, but you have to do it. Finally, copying your files manually requires you to DO IT!. But for very important items, it is a VERY GOOD IDEA!