have you backed up your hard drive lately?

[kendall]

Last fall my 6 month old Dell 8100 hard drive failed, and of course, I hadn't yet backed up that drive. There were a couple signs of potential failure, but really nothing telltale..... Unlike my 3.5 year old Dell laptop which I back up every month, I neglected to back up my hard drive because, after all, it was a new computer. Big mistake. I know, I know, it is not "if" your hard drive fails, but "when". I know, I know. Dell graciously gave me a 80GB replacement for my 40 GB. So now, I have a portable hard drive that I use to back up both my laptop and desktop. My files are copying away as I write.

And I really like my Dell laptop and desktop - no complaints here!

So, have you protected your data, photos, and other items on your computer? Have you ghosted or copied your files lately? You know you should - go do it....

 

[nativetxn]

Excellent reminder, Kendall. Timely, too

 

[doxdogy]

No, sure haven't. My hard drive bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, I had just saved my resume and letters of reference to diskette to have copies made at Kinkos.

 

[dtuleya]

Thanks for the reminder. Going to do it now!

 

[Towncrier]

I've got the next best thing. I have two identical hard drives in my computer attached to a "RAID" controller. Whenever I write anything to my C: drive, it is actually copied to both hard drives simultaneously. Unless both hard drives crash, I have a constant real-time backup of all my files. And one side benefit. Since both drives have identical files, when I read a file from the hard drive (as in loading a program or some data), it actually reads twice as fast because both drives are able to retrieve data at virtually the same time.

I had been fretting for months about not having a good backup, but I couldn't find any reasonable way to backup 80Gbytes of storage. Everytime that I tried to burn an image copy to my CD burner (which would have taken 100 CDs, by the way), the backup would fail about an hour into the process.

So if you are so inclined to purchase a RAID controller and a second hard drive, you too can enjoy the comfort and convenience of having a backup of your data without all the muss and fuss.

 

[d.kurz]

I usually just copy stuff I'd be devastated to lose.....certain pics, documents, favorites, address book, etc. I do it about once a month onto a CD that I bring to work and leave there.