Wait a Minute: Backup!

You know you should, and yet, you don't. No, I'm not talking about essential fatty acids, I'm talking about backing up your data.

Imagine this scenario:

Your hard drive fails. You haven’t backed up your data because

A) you were too lazy,

B) you were too lazy or

C) you have been meaning to do it.

All of your financials, all of your emails, all of your contacts, all of your digital music and photos of your CHILDREN are lost forever. Oh wait! You could pay a company $750 to get that data back. Oh. They say that it actually can’t be done. It’s gone. Now you have to buy a new hard drive and totally reconfigure your computer and…

It’s a nightmare. And it’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when. You can easily avoid this. There are many ways backup your data:

* You can get an extra hard drive, put it in your computer, and transfer the data.
* You can have the extra hard drive external to your computer, or
* You could backup online.

The simplest solution for the external hard drive is SimpleTech SimpleDrive. The software (StorageSync Backup) leads you through the setup, and once you’ve backed up the first time, the following backups will go much faster as it will be backing up only what is new or changed since the last time you did it. Some people love Simple Tech, some hate it. Let’s get to the good stuff…

My backup of choice is online backup. No more external hard drives, no more CDs and no more fiddling with backup software.

A company that backs up online elegantly and less expensively is Mozy. Mozy is an exciting (because it’s) FREE new software that lets you effortlessly, automatically and securely back up your data OFFSITE. The first 2 gigs are free, if you want unlimited gigs (um, that’s a lot of space!), it’s $5/month.

Good story: I told an acquaintance of mine heard about Mozy and she spent the five bucks a month for the big backup. TWO DAYS later, her hard drive failed! Kaput. Totally dead. No biggie, because she bought a new hard drive (for $80) and downloaded her backed up data from Mozy onto her new drive. This woman LOVES me. And I barely know her.

Here's how Mozy works:



Go to Mozy.com and click on "get mozy free." You will give them your email and create a password. In moments, you will receive an email from Mozy with a link to click. Once you've clicked on the link, you will be walked through a series of easy instructions to get backed up. That's it! If you choose, it can be a continuous backup, so when the software sees that you’re not active on the computer, it will backup your data securely because it’s encrypted.


Aaaah, the magic and mystery of online backup!

What If Your House Burned Down To The Ground?

OK, admittedly, it’s not something you really want to think about. But, what if? Let’s just imagine that no one was home, but that you lost every material item that you owned. Insurance could cover a lot of your loss, sure. But how are you going to get your children’s birthday photos off of your ashy external hard drive, mommy?

Back up your data! That is the single best piece of advice I will ever give you. Back it up online, even if you have an external drive. For $5/month at Mozy, you can achieve peace of mind in case, god forbid, your house burned, or someone stole your computer or your external drive crashed at the same time as your internal drive. See what I mean? Five dollars a month is NOTHING! For an unlimited amount of data! Sister, that is the bargain of the new millennium.