There’s an old joke that’s been doing the rounds of the computer industry for at least 30 years that I know of: There are two types of computer operator; those that have had a hard drive crash on them and those that are going to have a hard drive crash on them.
Computer hard drives have gotten very reliable over the years but they still do crash, and of course laptops and even desktop computers get stolen. Whatever the case, the result is the computer operator loses all their data.
At least once a month we get a call from customer who’s had a fatal hard drive crash on their computer or had their computer stolen.
Most of the time, they have no backup of their data, and in those cases, there's nothing we can do to help. The customer is then faced with re-entering all of their recipe data from scratch and also re-typing all sorts of other documents such as resumes, CVs, college assignments, etc.
This situation can be easily avoided - just make the occasional backup of all the essential data on your computer. Obvious really, but people don’t seem to get in the habit of making regular backups. They’re too busy doing other stuff and backups get pushed further and further down the priority list.
I can’t overemphasise this point: You MUST make time to backup your data, or you will suffer the consequences. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when”.
If a backup take you more than a few minutes to perform, then you’re doing it wrong, and you don’t need any special software, it’s all built into Windows.
Here's how:
Just grab a few blank CDs or DVDs from the local computer store and burn everything to CD or DVD, say once a week or once a month.
Assuming your computer has a writable CD or DVD drive (any computer purchased in the last few years should have one of those), just pop in a blank CD or DVD. Windows will ask if you want to burn files to the disk and you just answer in the affirmative. Windows will open a folder. Just drag/drop your data into that folder (recipe data, Word documents, spread sheets, etc.) and when you’re done, Windows will burn the data to the disk. Hey presto! You have a backup. (Don’t forget to label the disk with the date of the backup.)
Here’s a few things I think you should consider when planning your backup strategy.
- Decide how much data you’re prepared to lose with a hard drive crash. One week, two weeks, a month? That should tell you how often you need to perform a backup.
- Always backup to CD or DVD. Don’t backup to a USB drive. USB drives are for moving data between computers, not for backups. Plus, they are easily lost. CDs and DVDs do have limited lives, but if your hard drive dies you only need to go back a few weeks to the last backup to restore to a new hard drive.
- Every now and then, make a second backup and leave on at your Mum’s place or leave it with a friend, or even at work. All the backups in the world are useless if you have a house fire or some low-life steals your disks (it happens!). Keep a second backup at a remote location for the ultimate in safety.
- Backup everything that matters. Recipe data, word documents, spread sheets, your email data. Anything you wouldn’t want to lose should be burned to CD or DVD.
- Keep all your data off one directory on your computer (preferably My Documents). That way, when you backup all you need do is drag that one directory into the CD/DVD folder and you're done. If you scatter your data all over the computer then you need to remember all those separate folders to backup. Keep it simple, just hang everything off a single folder.
Follow at least some of the above advice and I reckon you’ll sleep better.
Subscribe