What Matters Monday – Backing Up!
Hello everyone! I hope you all had a fabulous weekend! It’s been a while since I did a blog post but I’m glad to be back today and I have a VERY important topic. Unfortunately most of us finally realize backing up matters the HARD way – after we’ve lost it all! I hope this post will help you figure out the best way to back up your files and get you started today. Believe me – you don’t want to learn about this the HARD way!
The first option is backing up your files to CDs and/or DVDs. I think this is probably the most common and the most accessible to pretty much everyone. DVDs will store a lot more than CDs but they’re also more expensive. The drawback to these is that no one is positive about how long these will last. They haven’t been around long enough to find out! There’s also the storage issue with these. If you have a pretty big stash (who doesn’t?!) that can take a whole bunch of CDs or DVDs and those take up space. I personally back up all my pictures, scrapping supplies, designing supplies, and layouts onto DVDs, and I have a firesafe to store them in. You have to remember to keep your backups safe!
Another option is an external hard drive. A lot of us have them as our only source for storing our digi stash but I have heard of some people having two – one as the primary source and the other as the backup. This sounds like a good option to me although it might be a little pricey.
Another alternative is backing up online. Our very own Happy Scrap Girl turned me onto to a site called Carbonite last year. I think it is fabulous, very easy to use and there is not limit on the size of backup. There’s also a free trial. I’m so glad I had my PC backed up with this a couple of months ago when it crashed. Everything on my EHD was fine but everything stored on my laptop was gone and I was able to restore it all at the click of a button. Such relief!!!! The only drawback to it is that you can’t back up directly from your external hard drive. It will only back up the files that are on your PC. If you’re looking for an online backup site that will allow backing up your external hard drive then I’ve heard good things about Mozy. This is definitely on my to do list since all of my stash is on my EHD and my firesafe is almost overflowing!
Whatever method you choose just make sure that you choose something and back up! Feel free to leave any more tips you have for backing up. We’d love to hear them. Hope you have a great one! – Jeni
November 10th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Thanks for the reminder, Jeni! I use Mozy myself, because all of my photo’s and digi kits are on an EHD. The initial back up process can take a long time, but now it just makes incremental back uos on a daily basis. I love the fact that I don’t have to worry or think about it anymore!
November 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
There are a lot of ways you can balance how you backup your data. May I suggest that you take a look at my company, Memeo, which has a backup tool that will automatically backup your data to both a secure remote storage site and an external hard drive, USB drive, iPod, FTP site, Network drive, etc. Also, if you are concerned about remembering to backup regularly our software has a unique feature that will instantaneously backup your files without any prompting. So the moment you save/modify/add a file it is backed up to any destination you like.
November 10th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Thanks for a great reminder Jeni.
Rachel–While we don’t as a rule allow comments of a commercial nature on our blog, since your comment was so relevant to the topic I decided to allow it. Thanks for sharing information about your product.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Great post! We back up onto an EHD and then again on DVDs and make 2 copies – one we leave at my in laws place. I’m so paranoid!
November 12th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Andilynn – Thank you for making an exception. I do encourage your readers to have both a backup to a local drive of some sort and an online backup, regardless of what vendor they may use.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:13 am
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