My home office PC had an automated backup program running that saved my data to a USB connected external hard drive. I figured everything was A-OK and there was nothing to worry about. In truth, I hadn't been careful enoough in selecting software that reported via email/popup/siren/flashinglights when something went wrong.
The external drive failed and I didn't notice. A couple of months later the local electrical utility company was doing some work about 2 miles from me. A truck backed into a pole holding a transformer... knocking out power in the area... and breaking my main hard drive in my PC. The one I thought was safely copying data to the external drive.
Emails, bookmarks, software, data, music files, photos, work, play, family tree data, contracts, etc, etc -- all gone.
Oops!
$1,500 later I had my data recovered to a new boot drive.
I also learned two things:
- Be careful about selecting my backup software
- Check to make sure it is running
All of my valuable emails, pictures, scanned images & documents, genealogy databases and reports were gone... without warning. And it cost me a bundle of $ and some frayed nerves before I got lucky enoough to get them recovered. I don't want to do it again.
For 2010... promise yourself to visit http://nolimitsuccess.info/mozy.html and when you forget about making backups you can sleep peacefully knowing your computer is looking after things for you. It will be a resolution that is easy to keep!
Happy New Year!
P.S. Did I ever tell you the one about the stolen laptop? I'll save that for next year!
