Smith's Technology Blog

Last night I set down just before bedtime to check my email. I was checking my business mail (University system where I work) and everything went blank. I have quite a bit of mail, stuff in folders, contacts, calendar, etc. I closed everything thinking it was probably a problem with my connection or something. I logged back into the web mail, and it puts me through the process of setting up a new mailbox. Horror. Where had all my stuff gone, and how was I ever going to function when I didn’t even know what was on the schedule for tomorrow? Glad to say that it is now 24 hours later, all my mail is back and once again my slave driver is back in control. When I got up this morning to discover that the problem with my mail had progressed to others at the university, I was quite concerned (after all, I am the guy in charge of such things at the university). As I was telling my wife of the disaster facing me today, she interrupted me with the Question “You of all people don’t have a backup of something like that?” Great question, and something that has stuck with me all day.

My youngest daughter got married a few years ago; to a great guy I might add (just in case he reads this. Just kidding) and they went off on their honeymoon cruse. I guess it was nearly a year later she came to me almost in tears. Her home computer had crashed, not from hardware failure but from a worm, and guess where all the photos of her honeymoon were? That’s right, on the machine that was toasted. After several hours of triage, I was able to rescue her photos. The irony; she had a CD burner in the machine, but no copy of these irreplaceable photos.

Backing up your information, photos, music, etc. is one of the most important things you should be doing where technology is concerned. Computers have become so reliable that we sometimes forget that they are man made and will fail, not may, will. There are many methods to accomplish this, depending on how much data you have. One of the most reliable ways is a memory stick. They get cheaper everyday, and greater capacity. They are quite reliable and are not prone to fail. Today they can hold a great deal more than CD’s, but can be overwritten easily, so consider that when deciding what to use. CD’s and DVD’s work great for photos, just make sure to protect them from scratches or heat. If you have a larger amount of data, like I do, external hard drives are your best bet. Today a terabyte drive is very affordable. However, use caution. One of our teachers was using one and knocked it off the table. That’s right, it was destroyed. It was her only copy of some of the data. Use care when using these drives, they are great but drops and falls will ruin them. For things like data for business I recommend purchasing a service from one of the better know online backup services. Your business is worth it.

Take care of those backups; much of what you have collected cannot be replaced. Also, today is patch day for Microsoft, and they have several critical patches out. Find time soon to get them on, they are like a software recall and need your attention.

Robert.