You can buy countless CDs, DVDs, flash drives, or external hard drives -- the problem is that most of us forget to USE THEM.

 

Have you backed up your pictures, documents, email and address book lately? We see digital tragedies during our computer repairs quite frequently -- music collections, photos, documents, emails, even days or weeks of work wiped out and returned to a scrambled mess of arbitrary ones and zeroes. If you have digital anything you might miss if it were gone, you’d better back them up sooner than later. Two things to remember -- there is still no perfect storage medium. Each method of digital storage has its own vulnerabilities. And everything under the sun is susceptible to theft, fire, water damage, oxidation, electromagnetic radiation, heat, power surges, poor manufacturing processes, bearing failure, and even too much sun.

 

Remember two things -- a backup is not a backup if it's not a backup. We know that sounds odd, but many people don't realize that by moving pictures to an external hard drive, they still only have one copy. The definition of a computer backup is more than one copy of your data. And for a backup to be a successful backup, it needs to be current. A six-month old backup won't do you any good if you have newer data that's lost.

 

We found Carbonite was the solution for us. It automatically backs up our data over the internet. It's safe, secure, reliable, and AUTOMATIC. For about $60 a year, we never have to worry about losing our priceless photos or data. It's a terrific service run by great people. BACK UP YOUR DATA --AUTOMATICALLY! Click here for a special offer from the fine folks at Carbonite. Yes, we do get a commission if you click through that link. Thank you!

 

If you want to learn more about all the different methods of backing up your computer, and pros and cons of each, visit our How to Backup Your Computer article.

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