Back Up What's On Your Computer

Cats3000 · ‎10-07-2013

This morning, I was trying to update a document. In the process, I lost the whole thing. I have an iMac and I use Time Machine and a LaCie external hard drive. I went into Time Machine, went back one day, and replaced the document. If I hadn't had that, I would have had to recreate the entire document.

Lesson: Back up everything (except the Operating System) on your computer. You'll never know when you might need to recreate something.

imashopper · ‎05-18-2012

Thanks for the nudge, I've been meaning to get this done!

151949 · ‎03-09-2010

When i had my Asus tablet repaired last Dec i lost a lot of pictures and all my recipes. So i got a flashdrive to back things up on and when the tablet died it's final death in April i had everything all ready to install on my new chromebook. I learned that lesson.

glb613 · ‎03-09-2010

On 5/27/2014 Cats3000 said:
This morning, I was trying to update a document. In the process, I lost the whole thing. I have an iMac and I use Time Machine and a LaCie external hard drive. I went into Time Machine, went back one day, and replaced the document. If I hadn't had that, I would have had to recreate the entire document.

Lesson: Back up everything (except the Operating System) on your computer. You'll never know when you might need to recreate something.

Not only your computer, you also need to backup your phone and tablet. I'm never surprised to hear people have all of their precious photos on their phone! There are also people who post asking how to get everything from their old computer to their new one. After asking, you find out it's the only copy they have.

PamelaSue72 · ‎09-22-2011

I wonder how many people actually bother to back-up their hard drives. I wonder how many people bother to purge Temp files, Cookies, and PreFetch files (yes, I purge my PreFetch files, not monthly, but about every other month). I wonder how many people bother to defrag their computers on a regular basis or do any of the other maintenance that should be done periodically to keep their computers running smoothly. I was talking to a guy who works with computers and he says he's appalled at the amount of people who don't do even standard computer maintenance.

Since I'm the one who does the computer stuff in our family, I'm also the one who backs up the pictures on all the cell phones, transfers the pictures from digital cameras to the computer, etc.

Many of my friends who have computers don't have the slightest inkling how to do any of this stuff, despite me writing down instructions for purging Temp files, defragging, etc. They just call me up and say, "How about coming over sometime and doing that stuff you do to my computer?" Or when they buy new virus protection, "Hey, how about coming over tonight and installing my new virus stuff?" When I remind them that I showed them how to do it, then it's "Yeah, but I don't remember!"

We have a 500 GB external hard drive and everything is on that thing. I have one file called "My Computer's Name" and another one called "DH's Computer's Name" and I go from there. The first Sunday afternoon of every month is always spent on computer maintenance. Sure I could lose something mid-month, but at least it wouldn't be a total loss. If it's some really important, though, like work projects for me or for DH, I back it up more often.

I also have a folder on that drive called "GF's Computer's Name" (which is my GF's computer). I back her drive up once a month, too, since she obviously has no clue how to do it herself, and I find that frustrating because, really, once you do it once or twice, how hard is it? If you have a computer, you should be responsible enough to take care of it. (That being said, even my DH has no idea how to defrag a computer or even to save anything to an external drive....he just depends on me to do it. I want to show him; it's important that he knows how to do these things, but he doesn't care.)

glb613 · ‎03-09-2010

I find people are really good at making copies after they've lost everything.

Lynnj · ‎03-21-2010

And may I also add that, not only is zero backup = zero backup, but 1 backup = zero backup. Everyone should have 2 external hard drives and complete backup to both regularly. If anyone thinks that an external hard drive won't fail they are fooling themselves.

At the very least, do a second backup of your most important stuff. Anything that you don't ever want to lose.

There are also online cloud storage systems that for a monthly, or yearly fee, provide a backup of your computer. This would be a good option for the 2nd backup. This means you would have your physical external hard drive backup available to you at your location. The online cloud storage can be accessed from anywhere. In the event of a fire, or anything else, and the external hard drive and computer were lost, you could at least logon online and access your things. The plus here is that when you get a replacement computer you can load your things to the new computer from the online storage.

Lynnj · ‎03-21-2010

PamelaSue72 - I agree with everything you said. I just posted on another thread, and made a reference to owning a computer is like owning a car. If you don't change the oil, or put gas in it, it doesn't work.

Staying with the analogy of owning computer/car, its almost like computer owners are like people driving with no clue. We all know how dangerous it is to drive drunk. Well people get on the internet with no virus/malware protection, and if they do have it, they don't run updates and scans often. Or even take care of things if they are identified. They often are the type who recklessly just click on whatever pops up, not even thinking through the consequences of their actions to how it will impact their computer. Its like a bunch of drunk drivers on the internet highway of life.

Just like people took drivers ed and/or read books about driving, people need to educate themselves about technology.

gazelle77 · ‎03-01-2013

Thankyou for the reminder. I have a Clickfree I purchased about 3 years ago and just used it to update. Does anyone know how often you should do the clickfree update? Monthly, every six months?

Lynnj · ‎03-21-2010

On 5/27/2014 gazelle77 said:
Thankyou for the reminder. I have a Clickfree I purchased about 3 years ago and just used it to update. Does anyone know how often you should do the clickfree update? Monthly, every six months?

Its so simple, I would do it weekly. But at the very least, monthly will work. And...if you have something important that changed since the last backup, do it immediately after you added whatever was important. So for example, if you just added a bunch of pictures/new document that you don't want to lose until your next scheduled backup, do a backup.