Back It Up : Works For Me Wednesday
This week’s Works For Me Wednesday is being hosted over at Don’t Try This At Home. It’s a new location, but the same fun tips and advice.
My advice this week is one that seems obvious, but still gets neglected by so many people. Myself included, and it took nearly losing everything to get it through my thick skull. BACK UP YOUR FILES.
Buy a pack of blank disks, you can get a huge package of them for fairly cheap at most office supply stores, and save everything off of your computer onto them. Pictures, files, links, favorites, whatever else you have saved get them onto a disk somewhere. If you keep a blog it doesn’t hurt to save that onto a disk often also. The very first blog that I had was hit by a hacker and I lost my oldest son’s first 6 months because I had written all his important memories there.
It’s a good idea to keep everything that is important to you saved in several locations. Keep a copy on your computer, saved to a disk, and stored online as well. This will make sure that you can keep what you love safe. I almost lost what became two full disks of photos that I had saved on my PC. Along with a mountain of files, articles, links, and emails that I wanted to keep. Luckily we were able to get back in and save everything, but what if we had not been able to?
This is especially good advice for any homeschoolers who have to track what you are doing through the year. I know of some that use files and charts on their computer that they then print off to turn in. But what if your computer suddenly died tomorrow? Get in there and save your files now, and remember to do so frequently. It might just save you from a monumental headache.
Works For Me Wednesday, tips, advice, save data
February 13th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Excellent reminder. I need to do this!
February 13th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Thanks for the reminder! I need to make some back ups this weekend.
So important!
Duckabush Blog
February 13th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Yes ma’am. Will do.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
You know, I was just thinking about this lately. This might sound like a dumb question, but how the heck do you actually download your blog on to something to save it? I’m on blogger and I cannot figure out how to do it!
February 13th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
May I suggest: a 500GB external drive is relatively inexpensive, and has a voracious appetite. Mine is plugged into the desktop PC, and I will bring the laptop over to jack it in, too, from time to time. Compressing files will help (I recommend 7-Zip; easy to use, and free), but not mandatory. Keep as many generations as you like; full copies or incremental backups, it all works.