Backup Your Computer In Several Places…Or Else.
A friend of mine just had both his computer AND his external backup hard drive die on the same day. Rare? Yes…but not impossible. While I have never had anything so catastrophic happen to my computer setup, I have always backed everything up both here in my house and online each day. I use an external Western Digital Passport drive with Time Machine (the built-in Apple backup application) that backs up my data every hour, and I also use BackBlaze to do daily backups over the internet. That first online backup took a few days, but now it only takes a few minutes per day (at most) because it only backs up changed files. My friend luckily used Mozy for his own online backup, so within a few days they sent him all his data via mail for him to reinstall on his now fixed computer. Thank goodness for online backups, because if he hadn’t been doing his, everything on his computer and external drive would have been gone – music, family photos, important documents – everything. And since my entire life is now digital (all my music, videos, “paperwork”, etc) is on my computer, backups are incredibly important to keep me from losing all my stuff. The lesson learned here? Don’t just do external hard drive backups, but also start doing online backups as well. BackBlaze is $5 a month for backup, and it’s the best $5 I have spent lately. Backup your computer…or else.