PSA - Back up your files!

Karen

Wiggle it, just a little bit!
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Jun 28, 2008
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Oh my goodness... I'll start this with saying how thankful I am that I back up my files regularly! I know my system isn't perfect or really the best, but I have all of my pictures and digital scrapping supplies stored on an external hard drive. I keep an extra one at home and another extra one at work (my offsite backup) and I back up to those extra EHDs regularly. Oddly enough the one at home I don't back up to as often, but I do back up to the one at work pretty often. Before I started working from home in November I backed up to the one at work every Friday. The downside to my method is that I have to remember to do it, but thankfully I still remember to do it.

Yesterday I was in the office, so I decided to take my EHD to work and do my back up since it had been a couple of weeks. I backed it up in the morning and then when I was leaving work, I picked up my cute little purse up-side-down and my EHD slipped out and hit the floor. It was only from about hip height, but it was hard enough that when I plugged it in at home it was making awful noises and then just died altogether. Eeek! I can't believe that I got lucky enough that I had JUST backed up, so I didn't lose any files. I already ordered a new EHD from Amazon that should arrive today, but if I hadn't backed up my files, I'd be a balling mess today.

So.... long story short... make you you have SOME kind of system in place and USE it! :giggle
 
Oh, thank you, Karen! I haven't backed up my files in a few weeks. It's always a good thing to do so!
 
Oh my goodness! I'm so glad you had just backed up!
And @Iowan I'm glad you were able to find most of the layouts on different drives.

Thanks for the reminder! I back up my photos but, I also have the only backup of a bunch of family photos. :faint2 I wish others in my family cared to keep track of photos! They all depend on me to do it.
 
Eek, so glad everything was on another device but bummer about dropping the EHD. I bet your heart just sank when you saw that!

As for backing up...
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Yes! I try to have at least 2 copies of everything, but I did just recently lose a bunch of scrapping supplies that I was pretty bummed about. All my pictures are on 2 EHDs and from 2016 on, they are in 3 places. I'm behind, though... I usually do it the end of every month, but the last couple have been so insane that I haven't done it. I'm planning to work through April and May this weekend!!
 
Thanks for the reminder. All of my photos back up to Google Photos and Flickr and I have Backblaze running 24/7. I know that we have our worked backed up, but it's still a big job to retrieve all of it.
 
Yeah for backup stories with a happy ending! So glad you were backed up! I have Crashplan online and an EHD for local backup. But today I went into my 2004 photo folder for the first time in many years. Some of the months are missing! This weekend I need to investigate if they're in Crashplan or on my EHD, but for all I know they've been missing for 10 years and aren't on any current backups. Back then I backed photos up on CD and DVD, so hopefully the disks will still work. I may have to order an optical drive--I don't think any of our computers have one anymore. (I'm concerned, but I still have all my layouts from 2004 so none of the good photos is truly gone.)
 
Woohoo for backing up!

As long both Smugmug AND Backblaze don't both fail, along with my Time Machine, then I'm okay. :D
 
So lucky, you are! I usually just back up once a month - maybe I should do it more often!
 
Yeah for backup stories with a happy ending! So glad you were backed up! I have Crashplan online and an EHD for local backup. But today I went into my 2004 photo folder for the first time in many years. Some of the months are missing! This weekend I need to investigate if they're in Crashplan or on my EHD, but for all I know they've been missing for 10 years and aren't on any current backups. Back then I backed photos up on CD and DVD, so hopefully the disks will still work. I may have to order an optical drive--I don't think any of our computers have one anymore. (I'm concerned, but I still have all my layouts from 2004 so none of the good photos is truly gone.)

I sure hope you're able to find your photos! I always worry I'll find something like that later on down the road and not realize I've been missing something. Good luck on the hunt!
 
Instead of backing up today, I'm spending the day (in the background at work) copying all my files from my backup HD to my new EHD. It takes SOOOOOO long! I'm going to be twitchy until I have it all in at least two places again.
 
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