OK, so bad Neil Sedaka reference.
For some reason, people seem to not make backups of their drives. I fear this becoming a problem for many.
I am more concerned than ever about people not realizing that they have to be diligent in making backups of the media being loaded onto their computers lest they lose it in a drive failure. I’ve known people who’ve lost all the physical photographs of their children before by fire, theft and divorce, though, the number has been few. I can just imagine how many will lose the digital photographs and videos of their families by blindly trusting a hard drive. After all, they can always make a print later.
I also think people don’t realize how much content they have and how quickly they accumulate it.
So, if you’re reading this and you’ve never made a backup or have seldom backed up, it is time to learn how.
First, do you have a functioning DVD or at least a CD burner in your computer. If not, please get one.
Secondly, you’ll need some software to burn the DVD. Use your editing software if there is backup support. If not, there are a million titles. Nero is one of them. You should have this so you can back up any other documents you have as well.
Third, you’ll need to plan what you need to backup on your computer. Installed software, if you have the installation media, isn’t necessarily important to back up.
If you have have videos, pictures, downloaded e-books, licenses, school projects, work projects, or just about anything in your or your family’s My Documents directory, please consider backing these up. It’s tragic to lose something on which you’ve spent part of your most valuable commodity, your life.
Years ago, I was working with someone at my University who had one copy of his PhD thesis that he was working on and he lost it. There was nothing left. A couple hundred pages gone in a blink of an eye. I don’t know what happened to the guy. Hopefully he had printouts. That could be you without backups.
Here’s an assignment for you and it may be more important than you think. If you know how to back up files, and you have any family or friends that aren’t savvy, can you please check to see if they need help learning to back up their content? They may thank you some day.
