Time to Review your Backup Procedures

Every now and then I just like to shout as loudly as I can to all my readers, BACKUP!!!! I’m sure you know how important it is to backup your data but are you really satisfied with your current back up procedure?

It’s a sign
This past week two good friends have been spending their valuable time rebuilding systems that suffered from a hard drive failure. PC Worlds Steve Bass wrote “my mother’s PC was a goner” and security expert Temerc posted “I’ve suffered a drive corruption”. I take this as a sign that I should spend today reviewing my back up procedures. The last time I had a major disk failure my wife almost moved out.

You might think it won’t happen to you but it happens all the time. The most common Email I read daily is from PLUS customers who say “My hard drive crashed, can you send me my PLUS code?”.

• Do you know where your application CD’s and registration keys are located if you need to rebuild your system?
  
• Are your recent photos safe?
  
• Have you verified that your backed up data is not corrupted?
  
• Does your backup program include everything you’ll want to save?
  
• Has the location of your folders changed since upgrading to Vista?
  
• Has your backup software been updated recently to fix bugs?

If you’d looking for a back up program and it’s not in your budget this month check out “Replicator” from Karen Kenworthy. Like my own WinPatrol, Replicator is a program that was written by a programmer for their own use but has been made available to the public.

I urge you to budget your time this weekend to BACKUP your important data and review your data procedures. While you’re at it, I know you didn’t change the smoke detecter battery when you turned your clocks ahead. Caught you didn’t I? So while your data is being backed up, go get batteries and make sure your smoke detectors are all updated too.

Back Up Plans and Hard Drive Crash Stats

I wanted to post something useful today but I’m having a lazy day. I didn’t feel like doing a lot of research and writing so I’m going to use this time to preach the bible of regular backups. It’s something that can’t be stressed enough.

Seriously, the number one support Email I receive looks something like this…

5/1/2007 Jeff wrote: “I recently had a total system crash and need to know how to reinstall the "Pro" version, which I previously paid for. “

4/29/2007 Cheryl wrote: “I have plus but when my computer crashed I lost the code and info. Can you please send it to me?”

4/28/2007 Linda wrote: “I WOULD LIKE TO REINSTALL MY WP PLUS. I HAVE MY COD NUMBER. I AM NOT SURE HOW TO DO IT. MY COMPUTER CRASHED AND I LOST EVERTHING”

Do you have an actual backup plan? Have you backed up your critical data recently? Your music? Photos? Address Book? Custom settings?

If not stop reading my Blog and do it now!

If you have or you’re done you can read the research Google did at http://209.85.163.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf