mgroves

“I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.” – The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3

“Backups are like insurance: it’s a waste of money until you need it.” – Me, just now.

If you’ll recall, I extolled the virtues of using Mozy as a backup tool some time ago. Let me again emphasize how important backups are.

There is a lot of stuff on your computer right now. Stuff that you may not think is all that important, but if it were to go away, you’d soon realize how important it actually was.

For instance, you might have:

• Address lists
• Pictures
• Homework files
• Financial records

You could certainly survive without these things, but would you want to? A computer is like a wallet: if someone lifts it, or you lose it, you won’t die, but you will be severely inconvenienced.

Well, it’s hard to make a “backup” of your wallet, but it’s so easy to make a backup of the files on your computer, that’s it’s just silly not to.

1. If you have around a couple gig or less of “important stuff” to backup, then just use a DVD burner, dummy! This is a very common method, but note that fire, floods, and zombie attacks may destroy both your PC and your backup. Consider a fireproof safe if you use this method.

2. If you have more than a gig or two to backup, DVD backups can be a hassle. You can use a free Mozy account for 2 gigs or less, or unlimited for $5 a month. Five bucks. Think of all the DVD media you wouldn’t have to buy. Plus, you don’t have to sit there and wait for the disc to finish burning: you can set it to run overnight, on any interval. You don’t even have to think about it, or remember to do it.

3. You can also backup to a second hard drive, like on a network machine or a media server. If your house burns or floods, you still have a risk of losing data this way. Some hosting services, like Dreamhost offer a way for you to backup files to the storage you already buy from them.

Backing up is a very important thing to do. Don’t put it off until later, because who knows what could happen between now and then? You’ll kick yourself if you don’t, and you will be incredibly relieved when you do. If you are reading this, and you don’t have a backup that’s at least a month or less old, take care of it right now!

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