Are you prepared for a computer crash? What would happen if you lost your wallet? If your phone were stolen would you be losing photos too? Here'e some food for thought on backing up - preparing for the worst is the smartest thing you can do.

Keep Your Information Safe - Back Up

Kelly -

Every week I hear from editors and friends who have lost something critical from a hard drive failure. This is a very real "threat" that is in our world, and we should take it seriously!

This is a great article - hopefully it reminds people to do those back-ups! It's easy to automate them, and so important to do them!

Yikes Kelly !

Didn't think about the photocopy backup of the real wallet !!

Now you know why I hang out on a woman's site..

You all gals really have different angles us men folk have no clue about !!

I can't get past using Norton Ghost even though its support is going to end soon.

Any local back-up products anyone had rock solid reliability with?

-- Burt B.

When I talk about backing-up, I sometimes feel like the doomsday messenger. I understand that people don't want to hear about the possibility of a hard drive failure or imagine worse case scenarios - it's just not fun, but I want people to know it is critical. I think one of the hurdles people face is that they imagine backing-up is much more complicated than it really is. In most cases it just involves a little dragging and dropping of files. You can use an external drive or cloud based program - there are plenty of choices. The important thing is that you use something.

I use a combo of external drive devices and Google Drive. It works for me and it gives me unbelievable peace of mind. Plus I can access my files from any computer which means I can work from anywhere.

Burt - you might want to take take a look at Clonezilla. I don't have personal experience with it, but I have heard good things about it.

Thanks Kelly

Yeah, I can imagine you get the doom and gloom stares.

Unless they actually went through it -- horse to water kind of thing.

Hey, you did your part - gave 'em a heads up !

It really is a devastating loss.

Now, what's really weird is that S.M.A.R.T.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. is not always that reliable.

Computers are very good at fibbing.

If you can get folks to go through the learning curve of:

www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Then, that OS is pretty darn robust and very close to bullet-proof like DOS used to be.

I mean if Widows is like a glitzy toothpick house, then Ubuntu is like a Sherman Tank.

Android is the child of Linux and Ubuntu is a Linux distribution which closely resembles Windows in behavior.

I hope this helps.

– Burt B.

Thanks Kelly

Yeah, I can imagine you get the doom and gloom stares.

Unless they actually went through it -- horse to water kind of thing.

Hey, you did your part - gave 'em a heads up !

It really is a devastating loss.

Now, what's really weird is that S.M.A.R.T.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. is not always that reliable.

Computers are very good at fibbing.

If you can get folks to go through the learning curve of:

www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Then, that OS is pretty darn robust and very close to bullet-proof like DOS used to be.

I mean if Widows is like a glitzy toothpick house, then Ubuntu is like a Sherman Tank.

Android is the child of Linux and Ubuntu is a Linux distribution which closely resembles Windows in behavior.

I hope this helps.

– Burt B.

Pete and repeat... first time I ever have seen a double post !

I guess you weren't kidding about backup !

hehe

-- Burt B.

Adjunct to your wonderful article Kelly, here is the most simple of all backup(s) for your weary friends and colleagues:

www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-windows-vista-system-restore/

You just have to remember to make a restore point before doing any major changes.

God Bless,

Burt B.