What backup plan do you use for your computer? Do you even have one? Could all of your files be easily replaced?

It surprises me how many people still don’t back up their data. Eventually your hard drive will break. You may get a new computer before this happens but what if there were a flood or a fire?

My hard drive died last January. Actually, it happened on of the worst days of my life but that is another story and is probably not appropriate for this blog. Fortunately, I had started consistently backing up 4 to 6 months before this happened. Yes, I had to buy a new hard drive, install it, install windows, and reinstall my programs but I still had my photos, music, templates, saved games, and application data, so other than the expense and the loss of a couple of hours it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was an aggravating experience but not a traumatic one.

I don’t currently use an online service, such as Mozy, to back up my data. I find these services are slow to upload and sync and I am a bit paranoid about the security of it. Instead I use scheduled backups with two external hard drives.

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