When’s the last time you backed up your tech?
Learn from my experience, and make a regular date to back up data
Ilost my computer on Tuesday. It went out with a bang … literally. I was starting a meeting with a reporter, where we had every intention of using said computer, when it suddenly beeped very loudly, and turned itself off.
I’m not one of those people who panics when a computer does something strange. I sort of shrugged, reached over and pressed the power button again.
The computer came back to life, only to tell me there was “a possible issue,” noting, “Hard Drive – Not Installed.”
That’s not a good sign.
And then, it beeped a second time – and, readers, this was not a gentle beep. This was a sound of pending doom, a screech more akin to someone stepping on a cat’s tail than a sound one would expect from one’s computer.
I called our IT guy, who came upstairs and a few minutes later walked away with my computer, shaking his head.
I haven’t seen the computer since.
Fortunately, there was a backup computer I could use.
But it’s never a good sign when the IT guy asks if there is anything on your computer you can’t live without.
And here’s where I failed. I usually back up my computer at least once a month, but some time in the last year, I fell out of that habit. I cleaned my workspace, put the backup hard drive somewhere where it was out of sight, and poof! I dropped the habit.
That was a bad move on my part, but I have no one to blame but myself on that one.
Fortunately, I’m not sure there was much on that computer’s hard drive. There might be a handful of photos I would have liked to have had off of there. And there were some files on there that would have been useful – but not having them is also not the end of the world.
It’s more the hassle of it all.
I primarily work in Cloud-based programs. So once I logged back into my Google account, all of my bookmarks are accessible, which gets me to our production system and all the websites we use for content.
And, I use a password vault program, which is also on my phone and tablet, so I can access whatever I need from a variety of places when it comes to passwords.
But, readers, let my experience be a lesson to you. Get a backup hard drive, and use it periodically to protect your digital stuff. You never know when your computer might decide it’s time to sign off permanently!
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