A Message to the Masses: Please Backup Up Your Data
Friday, December 25, 2009 at 10:53AM It is amazing to me how seeming intelligent people do not backup their data. Especially important data such as Quicken. So, as have so many in the past, I guess it's time to bring my two cents into the ring.
People... let me explain to you the working of the average consumer grade, internal hard disk drive. This device is unlike a file cabinet. It is used to store data that you have installed or created on your computer. It is also a machine. Most hard drives have a tiny little motor that turns the plates. These plates are what your data are stored on. The data is retrieved by the read/write arm. (Think of the arm of a record player, if you were born before 1980). And like any machine, a hard drive is prone to failure. Those little motors can burn out. And if that motor dies, the plates will not turn, the read/write arm will not see the data. And all those pictures and documents and movies and music are long gone... unless you have a few thousand bucks laying around and take the drive to a facility with a clean room; so they can remove the platters without dust damaging them.
So, how can you prevent this, you ask? BACKUP YOUR DATA!!! Quicken even asks you before you quit the program. There are so many ways to keep that important data save. Here is my recommendation. It is a two fold system. First, backup your data to an external device: a flash drive, external hard drive, even CD or DVD disk. Secondly, sign up for a online file storage provider. I recommend Carbonite, but there are others. Mozy is another good one. These usually run about fifty dollars or so a year. And there are more that I can't think of right not...XDrive comes to mind as well. Microsoft has one called SkyDrive that is free, but has size limitations. Mozy does as well. Google has a pay file storage that run five dollars a month. Google "online file storage" or "free online file storage" and see what it brings up. You can also backup those important files and store them in a safe deposit box or mail it to Aunt Myrtle. Make sure you do it! And do it often. And, for heaven sake, don't send your backup to the same hard drive!
We have a opportunity now in the digital age that was not available before. If, heaven forbid, your home caught fire, or you wereburglarized , even a within a few years ago, many important documents or beloved photos were lost. Now, with digital photos, and optical scanning, we can save these items, and be able toretrieve them if something horrible happened. So think about this. It is not difficult. Please, just make sure you do this. You may not have the latest Quicken file, but it will be easier to recover with a couple weeks old then it is starting from scratch.
Oh, one last thing. Don't take the hard drive apart yourself. Even though you don't see dust in the beam of you desk lamp, as soon as you open that drive up, you'vecontaminated it.
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