Let Me Tell You A Story...
It's a story about a young man; let's call him Jeff. He has a family, he loves his wife, adores his children, and has a taste for technology. He has a digital camera, MP3 player, and a digital video camera. Because he likes his gadgets, he's built a personal video recorder running Microsoft Media Center (one day he'll upgrade to Vista, but not yet) and has more than one computer in his home.
His wife indulges his geekdom. At first, she wasn't convinced. She'd roll her eyes at the prospect of digital photos, didn't see the benefit of being able to make your own DVDs, and wasn't really sure about recording her television programs without using a video cassette. She came around in the end, convinced by slide shows on the large screen television that Jeff owns, and countless DVD productions of holiday visits and their own wedding.
When Jeff bought her a laptop, and set up a wireless connection at home, she indulged him. These days she couldn't live without it.
Jeff's wife loved nothing better than sitting down with a nice glass of wine (red, if you're curious) and flicking through their baby photos; cooing over their adorable little expressions, and getting intolerably broody.
Jeff was happy. More importantly, Jeff's wife was happy. And then, one day, the hard disk in Jeff's main computer died. At first, it made some nasty grinding noises. Jeff thought nothing of it. It'll sort itself, he thought. And then, one morning, Jeff pressed the switch to turn on his computer, and was greeted with an error message informing him that his disk was unreadable.
Jeff's photos, video, mp3 collection (several thousand albums, built up over many years of owning digital players), important emails, that novel he'd always meant to finish, and all his financial records, were lost. He felt sick. His obscure albums, the baby photos, his wedding video. All lost. Irreplaceable snapshots of past memories, gone forever thanks to a faulty piece of technology.
Sounds awful doesn't it? For anyone who has an extensive mp3 collection, or a digital camera owner, backups are essential. Some forms are better than others, but anything is better than nothing.
This article will shed some light on the options, and try to offer you a little advice, in the hope that you don't end up like Jeff.
Article comments
1 - Iloz Zoc
Super rundown on available options. One of my portable hard drives died recently, and while I luckily had a back-up, I don't really spend the time and energy I should be to make sure I'm digitally secure.
Your article gives me some clear steps I'll be taking. Thanks!
2 - Jennifer
There is an excellent website for online backup information, news and articles. Check it out here:
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Cheers,
3 - Jarvis
Hi, also try IBackup for Windows to do online backup and restores of your critical data as none other than PC World has rated IBackup as the `best all-around online backup service.’
I use IBackup for Windows to backup almost all my important data and so far it has given me great results. I can also backup my open files with it. If need be, you can use it to do advanced tasks like backups of MS Exchange Server, MS SQL Server and individual mailboxes. IBackup accounts are compatible with most FTP clients on most platforms providing a powerful flexible tool to transfer files. You can also schedule unattended offsite backups for Linux, Solaris and other Unix flavors with encryption, compression and incremental options using another application called ‘IBackup for Linux’.
Before you take a free account, try their free trial and understand all the great features. You have to try IDrive that maps your online account as a local drive in your computer. Then open, edit and save files and folders in the account, as if they are on your local computer! With Drive Multimedia save all your multimedia files, create playlists and then stream them using your favorite multimedia player. IDrive for Mac is an excellent desktop interface for working with your IBackup account and Mac and you can perform operations like copy-and-paste, drag and drop, direct editing and more.
Also try out their browser-based application called 'Web-Manager'. Besides sharing files and folders with others, Web-Manager will also let you create sharable links and email them to your friends and partners and also allows `private sharing of data’ instantly with another IBackup user. It can also sense the media and image files in your account and display a media gallery from where you can easily stream media content.
4 - John
Losing important files can really cause a bad headache. What happened in the story you shared is really true and yeah there's a lot of means to secure our files so as if computer crashed, we still have a copy of those important files we need.
The other commentators have also provided ideas on how to manage files and keep it safely.
Thanks for posting!