I one day asked my grandfather why he has multiples of the same tool. He told me “If ever I lose one, I know I will always have another.” That should also ring true with everything you keep on your devices.
Many years ago I had purchased a new laptop and gave my mom my old one. With the laptop I gave her a copy of all my pictures I had saved through the years on there. I also added a copy of them to my laptop. I however did not inlude a copy of my music on the old laptop. I only trasferred it all to the new. About three weeks later my house was broken into and my brand spanking new laptop was one of the items that were stolen.
I was devistated. I was more than devistated. So much of my music was hard to find stuff that took me years to accumilate. I cried. I had John to try to see if we could dig it up off the old computer. That did not work. I was at a loss. Thank heavens I did make a copy of all my pictures or all of the kid’s baby pictures would be lost forever.
I learned a lot from that experience and I hope that never happens to myself or anyone else ever again.
There are some things you can do to prevent this catastrophe and that is backup everything you might want later.
What information should you backup?
After loosing important music files, I now backup everything. Any files you can save on your computer can be backed up and saved someplace else. All music, movies, pictures, home movies, family budgets, homework, and much more can be saved in multiple places. The pictures and videos on your phone and tablets can also be backed up. There are no more worries about not being able to save that great picture of the beautiful sunset your Aunt Marcie texted you of their trip in Mexico.
Where should you backup your information?
One of the more popular at home storage devices is the external hard drive. An external hard drive can be wired or wireless. A wireless or network enabled storage drive can be accessed by any person on the network by its password. I back everything up to my personal external wireless hard drive. I back everything up to it and often. For one, if anything was to happen to our house, one external harddrive is easier to grab than two PC towers, three laptops, and other devices. Personally, the bigger external harddrive you can afford the less of them you will have to buy in the future. We are now in the process of buying another.
I also have a portable external harddrive that hold my pictures only. Pictures are the one item that crushes a heart if they are lost. It also makes life easier when the grandparents are wanting a lot of pictures becuase I can just let them copy off the portable instead of trying to send multiple emails of pictures. A portable harddrive is like a big USB flash drive. They are a handy tool.
For smaller files that you want to backup and have ease of transport, a flash drive or a media storage card is always a great choice. You can now get them from 1GB to Kingston now offers a 1TB flash drive. They are great for carrying files between work, school and home. I see many people
Online, there are many options of cloud storage. All that I have found has a small free version and a pay-for version that is bigger storage. The most popular being Dropbox. I also use Bitcasa. What cloud based storage to use is up to preference. I have more than one that I use but that is primarily due to what each is used for. Most can be used on mobile devices so you can use them across the platforms. The best thing about using cloud storage is that it is not stored in your house. In the event something happens to your home, all of your files stored in the cloud will not be damaged because they are stored on the cloud servers. Another great advantage with cloud storage is you can access your files wherever you have an internet connection.
There is also what is now concidered the old school way. You can still save everything to CD and DVD disks. Anymore, the only time I use disks is to put pictures on for customers. I am not a fan of this method anymore but many still prefer it.
How you back up your information is your choice. My main advise is to backup everything and back it up often.
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