Monday, March 7, 2011

I will do a backup, I will do a backup, I will do a backup!

Had a real scare on Friday.  The tile was done in my craft room Thursday so DH and I were putting all my furniture, etc back where it belongs most of the day.  When he hooked my computer back up, it wouldn't boot up!  We tried everything, including his switching out the power source.  Nada, zip, zilch!

I assumed my hard drive had crashed and I had lost all my data, would have to call Provocraft and deal with installing my Design Studio software again, etc.  But, I dodged the bullet this time.  The repairman told me it was a problem with my RAM and he had it diagnosed and repaired in less than an hour!

I hated to lose all my documents, card layouts, email contacts, etc.  But I was so stupid that I had not backed up our tax return or my Quicken on a source outside my hard drive.  I promised the repairman I'd do a backup for sure, because there was no way I could retrieve that information!

I know I use my PC a lot, but really had not realized how much I rely on the Internet for information until I was "computerless" for 4 days!  Several times I had the thought, "well, I'll just look that up online" only to remember my PC was broken.  DH has a laptop but I find it almost impossible to use since I totally hate the flat keyboard and ball type mouse he uses!

So, if I can't do anything else, I can serve as a bad example!  Do a backup of files you just can't replace.

My new mantra?  I will do a backup, I will do a backup, I will do a backup!

5 comments:

Vanessa said...

So glad you didn't lose everything! A few years back my hard drive crashed and I lost EVERYTHING! The photos were the worst--my husband had just been to his family reunion and I lost all his pictures. I still feel horrible. I immediately bought an external HD, which I used faithfully. One day I got paranoid and bought a second external HD to back up my back up--thank goodness because shortly thereafter my 1st external HD crashed! Needless to say, I have a serious love/hate relationship with computers!

Suzanne cricutcraftingrammyblogspot.com said...

This is a good thing for everyone to be reminded of. I lost a lot of stuff two years ago. Luckily I had some saved. Now we have an external drive to back up on and I save laptop stuff to it too. Sure am missing you on thread. Is everything almost done? I bet you will be glad when your big project is complete. Hope to see you soon. S

Carrie K said...

I think we could all learn from this!! I need to do a back up too!!

Unknown said...

I had a similar scare a few years ago and have used the Carbonite service since then. It is an automatic update. You choose which files and/or folders that you want to back up to the off-site Carbonite and when there is a change in that file or folder, Carbonite backs up behind the scenes. I keep my pictures, documents, etc. backed up. This comes in really handy if you get a new computer and need to transfer some files...restore them from Carbonite. I had a friend lose about 5 years of digital photos when her hard drive crashed. The first thing she said to me is "Oh, WHY didn't I start using Carbonite like you told me!". Good luck...Have fun putting your craft room back together!

mschiddy said...

Glad you didn't lose everything! I'm crossing my fingers that my PC doesn't crash before I do a back up!