As many of you know – I’ve been repairing computers for the past 17 years. All technology has evolved over the years I’ve continually heard one statement over and over: “Backup your data.” From the old 486 machines, through the Pentium era, onto to today’s quad core systems…I’ve heard this same “Backup your data” statement so often that it’s almost become a mantra. Back up stuff up so if, for some reason or other you loose your data, you can retrieve it from the backup. If you only have one copy of your data don’t risk loosing it – back it up.

I was always backing up my data through my high school daze, college semesters, & office job life.

I never had any problems…until two years ago.

Two years ago a horrible thing happened. My hard drive crashed and I lost about five months of pictures & movies. I was reloading my operating system at the time and I made the mistake of filling my hard drive to about 90% capacity. About halfway through this process my hard drive said “ugh!” and sputtered and crashed. As soon as I realized what was happening I panicked. I did everything I could to save the data but, alas, all was lost. I had most of my pictures backed up on other drives but 5 whole months of pictures & movies were gone forever.

According to this article hard drives have a short life span of 3-5 years. Other types of drives (USB thumb drives & Tape drives) can last a little longer. To me, the words “hard drive” convey a sense of permanence and reliability. I’ve spoke with a lot of people who do everyday computing. Most everybody believe that, as long as they buy the newest & latest hardware, they don’t have to worry about backing up your data. Don’t believe it.

If you were to look inside a hard drive you’d see a pretty simple design: 5-8 metal platters that sit onto of each other. These platters are engineered with great precision…however…they are man made. Nothing is man made is perfect. Technology is improving all the time, creating better & better designs, but nothing is perfect.

I’ve since learned my lesson – always backup your stuff! Pictures, videos, movies, documents, spreadsheets…precious data…it all must be backed up or you could loose it.

The easiest low tech way of backing up your stuff: buy yourself an external hard drive, dump your data on it, and unplug it. Keep the drive unplugged (both the USB cable & power cable) to ensure lightning strikes can’t reach your precious data.

Local retails sell various external hard drives from $60-$100. Sam’s Club sells a Seagate 320GB Portable Hard Drive for $78. Walmart sells a Western Digital 250GB drive for $79.

If you can wait 2-3 days for shipping you can can a much bigger bang for your buck with the major etailers. This Acomdata 1TB Drive is $97. in some cases you’ll need to add $3-8 shipping costs but everything is still much cheaper than your local retailer.

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