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How
To: Have You Backed Up Your Files Lately? And on What Media?
Pop quiz: When was
the last time you backed up your computer files?
Bonus question: And when you did back up your files, what storage
medium did you use?
After encountering a major computer crash (which wiped out every photo and
music file on the hard drive, as well as all the contacts) and the major
post-crash file recovery process that ensued (which could not restore every
file) a friend of ours sought out more thorough backup procedures.
“Flash drives!” thought our very mobile friend. “Quick and easy to save data
to, easy to store, and everything will be portable.”
“Whoa, hold up there, Tex!” said our friend’s handy dandy computer guru.
“Flash drives aren’t reliable for long-term storage. They’re really meant
for transporting project files back and forth from the office.”
“What you need,” continued the friendly guru, who was of the truly helpful,
trustworthy sort who was not earning a commission on a sale, “is an external
hard drive. Back up everything on that, and also save your most important
files to DVDs. That will give you three copies of the most important
stuff—plenty of backup.”
“Oh, and by the way…”continued the guru. “Should you use CDs instead of
DVDs, don’t forget you can only write to them once. After that,
any new files overwrite what was on the disk and you lose everything that
was there before.”
“Yes,” said our friend sadly, glancing at the CD on the desk, wishing this
chance meeting with the computer guru had happened a couple of days before,
when the disk was still full of gig photos. “I found that out.”
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