Come on, be honest, when was the last time you backed up any of your personal data, you know all those treasured photos and documents you’ve been collecting on your hard drive? Last week, very good. Once in a blue moon, more likely. Never, quite possibly!
Why is it that we don’t see the need to protect our valuables?
Too boring? Yes, I know running back up programs is hardly the most exciting thing to do.
Don’t know what to do? Possibly, although it really isn’t that difficult.
Think it’s not necessary? I suspect this is nearer the mark. “Why do I need to spend time making copies of all my stuff,” I hear you cry? “My laptop is nearly new. It’s never let me down and I’ve got loads of free space on my c: drive.”
The painful truth is that traditional hard drives do fail. They contain moving parts which eventually wear out, often with little or no warning. Not only that, your treasured data can also easily get corrupted by other hardware failures, system crashes or virus attacks.
Ask yourself the simple question, if your laptop “died” today, what data currently on the hard drive would be irreplaceable?
If the answer is nothing, then sit back, relax and don’t worry. For the vast majority however, the answer is probably our photos, video clips, emails and letters. In which case you need to do something about it, or accept the fact that one day you may have to seek specialist data recovery services, pay out lots of cash and hope against hope that they can recover all your memories within a convenient time frame (a service which of course My PC Surgery is only too willing to offer!)
There are lots of options for backing up. Let’s take a quick look at one of the simplest. Virtually all home computer these days have the facility to write to CD’s and DVD’s. The ability to “burn” a disc is automatically built into the later versions of Windows so you won’t even have to spend additional money on software. If you are running Windows XP, or simply want an alternative, CDBurner XP is a great piece of software, freely available for download.
Disc media is cheap and plentiful. OK, discs might not be as indestructable as once thought, but they will at least give you a copy of your most precious data to store away for that rainy day. Like any insurance, you may never need to use it. Lets hope you don’t.
Go on, don’t put it off, collate those most precious photos, buy some blank dvd -/+r’s and burn that first disc today. One day you might just thank me you did!