How I backup my files & School's OUT!
But we are all done with this...
and on to this...
yes, I know what you're thinking...this should be a picture of the kids at the pool or something! For the record, we have been to the pool and plan to go again this week but it's just so darn HOT here in Texas that we like to try to find fun stuff to do inside the air conditioned house. :)
And I've been doing some of this...
A- working on my laptop.
B- wearing my comfy clothes (aka: pj's) all day long.
C- doing laundry, and laundry and laundry. (And then letting it sit in the basket for days until I need that basket to do more laundry.)
D- Cuddling with Charlie (when he's doesn't stink).
E- Finding MORE laundry that hides from me like this pillow case underneath the couch.
F- (not pictured) Letting Lyndon use my camera to take pictures like this one!
Maddie has only been out of school for 3 days now...but I love it!
What are you doing this summer? Any fun ideas to beat the heat??
Changing the subject... How I back up my files.
About a year ago my old computer containing a couple years of pictures bit the dust. Yep, the blue screen of death was true. I can't say I was taken by surprise. I knew the computer was acting funny, not starting smoothly, etc... all the signs leading to disaster. One evening I even took the time and made a folder titled, "Save to External Forever" and I put all my pictures I wanted to save in that folder. I intended to put them all on my external hard drive...tomorrow.
Well, my friends, there was never a tomorrow. My computer died and that was it. Why didn't I just save everything when I had the chance?! ugh. I've since taken it in to see about recovery but I'm not willing to shell out that much moolah just yet. I'm hanging on to the darn computer until I am. Luckily I kept up on our family blog very diligently so I still have most of those family pictures saved there. And any photo sessions I had with clients were archived on a cd. However, it saddens me that there are other things that are stuck in there.
I'm telling you this to possibly save you from the same heartache. I try to save all my pictures to an external hard drive so I don't have to relive that again but I admit, sometimes I get lazy and I just don't do it! I need something to be EASY and painless and I found the perfect solution for me... (btw, I am in no way affiliated with any of these companies, I just want to share the good info.)
The solution for me is online storage and back-up. I love it because a) it AUTOMATICALLY backs up everything on my computer and b) it's super cheap! and c) gives me so much peace of mind.
When I was looking into online storage I found that there were quite a few companies out there and most of them were offering the same service for about the same price. But after I did some side by side comparisons here and here, I went with a company called, "CrashPlan". It's only $5/month, gives you unlimited storage, updates your files automatically (that's the key for me.) and will even save the files from your external hard drive if it is connected to your computer.
sweet deal.
Do you back up your files? If so, I want to hear how...
14 comments:
I agree. I currently use Mozy on my PC and it has taken a lot of stress off of me! All of my kid's pictures are on my computer. I go to my computer and it tells me it's automatically backed up and it's just so nice. Otherwise I'd forget to use the external hard drive or something. In the long run, the online storage will probably cost more than the external hard drive BUT then I just don't have to worry about it AND what if your house goes up in flames? Your external hard drive is MELTED and all of the pictures, along with everything else in your house, is gone!
(One bit of info though if it helps anyone... I take little video clips with my Canon camera. Somehow I realized that I didn't think Mozy was storing everything that I had (it seemed too small) on my computer. I realized that I needed to go in and change the settings to make sure it also backed up those movie files. The ended in something else - like .mvi or .mve or something. Make sense? NOW that I know my video clips are being stored as well I'm super relieved. They weren't being stored for a while.)
We have an external hard drive hooked directly to our network at home and our computers automatically back up to it daily. :)
BUT! Have you tried to recover the files that Crashplan is backing up? I am not even hinting that they are not doing what you are paying them do ... but ... have you? This is a pretty important step in your disaster recovery plan. Well, not just yours ... ANYONE'S. You need to be sure that the last mile of your files' round trip is a smooth one. :)
I back up my files to an external, and I don't do it very often (like once a month), but I don't delete the pictures from my camera card until after I back up my pictures.
Also, have you tried getting a hard drive reader for your old hard drive? My parents' laptop died but they were able to buy a reader that let them grab everything with their new iMac...
Alicia--Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to check to see if ALL my files are being saved.
Kristena--I didn't know your computer could automatically back up to a hard drive. Love it.
Craig-- Good point. That is something worth trying out. I better make sure I can actually get to my files if needs be.
Jennie-Thanks so much for the tip. I'm going to try it.
Jennie makes a good point that I should not have overlooked. Go to a place like Best Buy or Fry's and ask for an "External USB Hard Drive Enclosure" (about $30). Pull the hard drive out of your dead computer, mount it in the enclosure and plug it into a USB port on a working computer. The drive in your dead computer may not be the problem at all; it might work just fine. If so, this strategy will allow you to easily copy files from the drive to a working computer. I know this is kind of technical. If it's a little out of your league I'll bet you know at least one geek who can easily do it for you.
Now, if the problem *is* the hard drive you will be out of luck and about $30 (though the retailer will probably let you return the enclosure in accordance with their return policy).
We had all kinds of external hard drives for back up in the past. One got lost in a move, one died. Now we use Backblaze. $95 for 2 years. Peace of mind for $4/month is a happy thing!
My hubby is a tech wiz, thank God for that! He has recovered files from crashed hard-drives and currently has our files on a redundant drive system (RAID), from a non-techie I understand it as it makes two copies of the same data over more than one hard drive so if one dies you still have an exact copy on another drive to save your rear. Then you need to go out and buy a new hard drive to set the RAID up again.
Just to show that I occasionally follow my own advice: I restored a file to my computer from the CrashPlan backup and it worked perfectly. :)
Craig-Awesome!! I'm glad it works. :) Also...thank you for writing a considerate, helpful, and honest review of my book on Amazon. I really appreciate it.
Truth to tell, Katie ... that must have been a different "Craig".
Austin American-StatesmanBeyond organizing: storing and preserving those precious photos and videos
It’s always so depressing when a hard drive that contains anything of sentimental value crashes. It’s a good thing that you now back up all your files on an external hard drive and also in online storage websites. Some of these online storage websites also offer data recovery, so you may want to look into them to find a price that you’ll be happier with.
Ruby Badcoe
I had a hard drive fail and luckily had just purchased and plugged in an external hard drive a few weeks before, so I was had a backup of all my data and pictures. After that experience, I wasn't confident that my external harddrive, being a hard drive wouldn't fail also, so I decided to get a second form of backup protection. I purchased carbonite, an online automatic backup system. The only problem is, I occasionally remove pictures from my computer which are backed up on my external hard drive, in order to free up space. I started to wonder what happened to those on carbonite so I called....unfortuantely, if the pics are not currently on your computer, they aren't maintained in the online storage backup. So in other words, the online does a monthly backup of whatever is CURRENTLY on that computer and dumps anything that's been removed. So, that leaves me with just ONE copy on my external hard drive. Yikes. Anyone know of an online backup that will retain all the pictures for eternity....even if I delete them from my computer? Would appreciate the help....
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