by siegestate
Sat Jun 19th, 2010 at 08:55:24 AM EST
A few weeks ago, the New Year turned the corner, and in a few hours 2010 will be half over (272 hours and counting). The sun already is ticking to that solstice point.
Now is the time to decide whether you are going to let another significant unit of time go by without backing up your computer.
I have the same trouble some people write about. Several loose hard disks are laying about, partially filled and certainly not big enough for the main computer backup.
Perhaps a project to get them cleaned and combined will get me one clean disk by month's end.Hmmm. That's 10 days. Perhaps Helen's Unicorn will change colors to match the pistachio ice-cream fountain as well.
Instead of going for broke, flailing and failing against the ideal, how about just backing up that huge mail file? Certainly you can do that while making dinner...or if it is so large, letting it copy during the night.
Perhaps a dedicated hour of organizing could combine all the recent files into a CDs worth of storage.
The other extreme would be to follow the instructions that some comment responder give in this article: Windows 7: Can I create my own Windows 7 recovery disc without all the bloatware?. Of course, being a Mac guy, I wouldn't know about any of the recommended software, but I can say...if you make that backup, you will certainly never have to use it. But it will be worthwhile just for the comfort it gives you when you read or hear of someone else's woes.
Doctor, Medicine? you ask? Well, yeah. I did a complete back-up using Carbon Copy Cloner a couple weeks ago. But, I've got 40 years of computer mistakes under my tattered belt...that makes me a pro...or at least a consultant...I even made the supreme newbie mistake of simultaneously writing 4 chapters of a presentation this week, and was so into it that I bounced from one to the other as the different topic's ideas threw themselves at me...and didn't think to hit the SAVE button once. I even did a simultaneous re-formate of my mail files, and some other CPU and hard disk consuming debug tasks...it all went so well until that grey screen appeared telling me that I had to re-boot.
So, listen to me...I'm an expert.
Regardless, I use my computer for pro stuff that I can't afford to be without. So when I get on the plane for that convention next week, I'll have a DVD with my email and recent files with me, a mirror of the one left at home. (That's the theory anyway. I do it probably 80% of the time.
I also backup all my websites regularly, and keep a copy on that drive that lives in the somewhat fireproof safe in the other room. Since my sites are Joomla based, the backups are done with the Akeeba extension. I have had the experience which proves that their backups are a reliable (and amazing) way to replace a completely wiped out site in minutes.
So, Join the Back-Up a Little CampaignTM that will hopefully be a regular feature here at your home of usable tangents, eurotrib.com
