I always wonder how much information people lose because they don’t back up important files and pictures. I’ve seen colleagues lose valuable data and I’ve lost things in the past. As a result I’m relatively anal about backing up things. I regularly back up my photos, music, important work files etc. They go to a variety of places.All my pictures go straight from the Compact Flash card to a monthly folder on my D drive. I don’t put them on C since I reformat every so often and I consider that drive to be more susceptible to problems because of programs, potential viruses etc.
At the end of every month (sometimes two months) all the photos go to to DVD or CD (depends how many photos I took that month). Then, every so often I back the entire folder to an external portable hard drive.
Videos are stored on another external drive, music to a third. Important household and work files to a fourth. Work files also get backed up to a Flash Drive that goes with me and my laptop when I am out of town.
So I generally consider myself pretty safe from data loss.
But things happen.
Yesterday I did a backup of my photos using Synch Toy. However, I think I set it up to synch the wrong way and so I stopped it, noticed that it had put things into a folder it shouldn’t have and told the computer to delete the folder. Since so much had been transferred there, it couldn’t be stored in the recycle bin. The computer warned me that it was about to permanently delete it….
Yes, yes, go ahead.
Bad move.
When I looked back the synch was done awfully quickly. In fact, most of my photos had vanished…..not good.
Well, luckily I have all those disks … all 8 years worth of them. Two disks were corrupted…..so in the end I did lose some, but not much.And at least I print my pictures, so I still have them.
Live and learn.
No system is infallible.