Monday, June 16, 2008

Whooooa....Back It Up Baby!

I posted this a couple weeks ago over at After The Dust Settles... There is still lots of severe weather around, so I thought I would post it here too.

Have you backed up your hard drive lately? With summer storms in full swing now, power outages are inevitable and sometimes power surges come with them. Bad news for computers that aren't on a surge protector. Or maybe you have a surge protector that needs reset or replaced. Unfortunately, surge protectors do not last forever.

Last year my computer broke. It was acting up before we had storms, but then it bit the dust after a big storm. Turns out it was NOT storm related, but it did get me to really think about backing up data. I have a lot of files on my pc that I would hate to lose. So I got a battery back up surge protector and an external hard drive.

The battery back up surge protector is cool in the fact that it will allow your pc to stay on for 15 minutes, I think, even if your power goes out. This allows you to save anything you were working on and shut the computer down properly. After 15 minutes, on battery back up, it shuts the computer down itself. I don't know about your area, but out here in the sticks, our power is constantly flickering as any storm goes by. Last year, the computer would go off. This year, the surge protector keeps the computer going and switches back to household current when the electric is stable again. It's been a lifesaver. I got mine at the local computer store. I was desparate and paid top dollar. You can find them online for under $50 w/free shipping. They are very heavy, so free shipping is a must.

The external hard drive I use to back up my enitre hard drive. I have had computer problems in the past and have lost files as well as my hard drive. Each time I back up a few more files. Last year I found a reasonably priced external hard drive and began backing up everything. This will make it easy to start over if something were to happen to my computer. My biggest problem is just remembering to back up the hard drive every so often. I am going to do it today. Oh yes I am.

At the very least, if you are running windows, you should create a system restore point. It only takes a minute and will create a point on your hard drive that you can go back to, in case, say your computer gets a virus or something. I believe you can go back to that point before you had the virus and voila, it will be gone. If I am wrong there, please let me know. But I think that's how it works.

So, if you haven't lately, go back up your files! Do it now. You never know what is going to happen when. Trust me, it is way better to be safe than sorry.

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