The Tech Article that EVERYONE Should Read! (Yes, that means YOU!)
Some friends of mine just had their house broken into. Although anything is definitely too much, the thieves made off with surprisingly little. HOWEVER, one of the things that was taken was a laptop.
A couple years back I had a laptop computer stolen and I know how painful the process is. Set aside the feeling of violation and the emotional trauma, although those are HUGE -- just the tangible and intangible cost of the loss of the data is potentially incalculable.
More recently I had a hard drive crash on my laptop. I was fortunate that it died slowly and I was able to backup to an external hard drive, but there are no guarantees when it comes to failing hardware.
THAT PRECIOUS, IRREPLACEABLE DATA ON YOUR COMPUTER CAN BE LOST.
So ... if it happened to my friends and it happened to me twice ... what should be done (within reason) to protect against such loss? In a word, the answer is the "CLOUD" - and here are 2 ways you can make use of it.
(1) If you don't already use a password manager, START TODAY! Roboform and Lastpass are the 2 best known ones. They are relatively reasonably priced (less than $15/year). And as long as you use them religiously you will never lose a password again.
Typically people have too many passwords to remember (or, worse - they just use one password for everything) and so they keep track of them in a text file or a Word document. If you're doing well you remembered to password protect that document, but still if your computer goes down you have lost all access.
It takes about 10 minutes to download and install a password manager. Then for the next few days or weeks every time you log into a web-site it will offer to save the information for you - you click OK. If you change your password it will offer to save it - you click OK. You will gradually become dependent on it probably, but that's OK - you now have all your passwords available to you at the click of a button (it also does form filling and stuff) and if your computer is stolen or breaks you haven't lost anything.
(2) Start backing up in the Cloud. There are backup services like Carbonite or more well-known sync'ing services like Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive or SpiderOak. Most of them start with a free account with fairly limited space in hopes that you will start paying for more space. I'm a cheapskate and so I use a combination of Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive, just dividing my data up across the various accounts so I keep under the "free" threshold. For most people it probably just makes sense to bite the bullet and start paying.
I used to keep most data in "My Documents" and put a few things that I cared about in Dropbox or Google Drive. Since my hard drive crashed I stopped deciding what I cared about - I simply put EVERYTHING in one of those places. All "My Documents" contains is 3 shortcuts - one to the dropbox folder, one to the google drive folder, and one to the onedrive folder.
Whatever solution you choose for backing up into the cloud, make sure that you have installed software (often called a "client") on your computer that AUTOMATICALLY does the backup or synchronization for you. You CAN have an account on any or all of these without installing the software ... and it does NOTHING for you. It's like having a handy shelf somewhere in your house but never putting anything on it.
Once you've installed the client on your computer and moved all your data from My Documents over to Dropbox it will take quite a while to upload all the data. Definitely plan on letting it work overnight and be aware that it may take even longer (3-4 days or more if you have a lot of pictures or music or movies).
Make sure (as in, actually check!) that whatever backup solution you are using is actually updating in the cloud every time you make a change to a file on your computer.
Some people make a strong case for backing up to an external hard drive or etc. I used to do that. It always depended on ME taking the initiative to do the backup. And I was very careful -- most often I backed up once every two years, but every once in a while I was so obsessive about it that I backed up more than once within a single year! HOPELESS! Don't rely on a system that requires your intervention - start using a backup system that works automatically!
----
It's only a matter of time before you lose data and are forced to rely on your backup. Are you prepared? Implementing these 2 simple steps will make that day a relatively painless one. Waiting until tomorrow to implement these 2 simple steps will make that day even more horrific than it could be!
A couple years back I had a laptop computer stolen and I know how painful the process is. Set aside the feeling of violation and the emotional trauma, although those are HUGE -- just the tangible and intangible cost of the loss of the data is potentially incalculable.
More recently I had a hard drive crash on my laptop. I was fortunate that it died slowly and I was able to backup to an external hard drive, but there are no guarantees when it comes to failing hardware.
THAT PRECIOUS, IRREPLACEABLE DATA ON YOUR COMPUTER CAN BE LOST.
So ... if it happened to my friends and it happened to me twice ... what should be done (within reason) to protect against such loss? In a word, the answer is the "CLOUD" - and here are 2 ways you can make use of it.
(1) If you don't already use a password manager, START TODAY! Roboform and Lastpass are the 2 best known ones. They are relatively reasonably priced (less than $15/year). And as long as you use them religiously you will never lose a password again.
Typically people have too many passwords to remember (or, worse - they just use one password for everything) and so they keep track of them in a text file or a Word document. If you're doing well you remembered to password protect that document, but still if your computer goes down you have lost all access.
It takes about 10 minutes to download and install a password manager. Then for the next few days or weeks every time you log into a web-site it will offer to save the information for you - you click OK. If you change your password it will offer to save it - you click OK. You will gradually become dependent on it probably, but that's OK - you now have all your passwords available to you at the click of a button (it also does form filling and stuff) and if your computer is stolen or breaks you haven't lost anything.
(2) Start backing up in the Cloud. There are backup services like Carbonite or more well-known sync'ing services like Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive or SpiderOak. Most of them start with a free account with fairly limited space in hopes that you will start paying for more space. I'm a cheapskate and so I use a combination of Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive, just dividing my data up across the various accounts so I keep under the "free" threshold. For most people it probably just makes sense to bite the bullet and start paying.
I used to keep most data in "My Documents" and put a few things that I cared about in Dropbox or Google Drive. Since my hard drive crashed I stopped deciding what I cared about - I simply put EVERYTHING in one of those places. All "My Documents" contains is 3 shortcuts - one to the dropbox folder, one to the google drive folder, and one to the onedrive folder.
Whatever solution you choose for backing up into the cloud, make sure that you have installed software (often called a "client") on your computer that AUTOMATICALLY does the backup or synchronization for you. You CAN have an account on any or all of these without installing the software ... and it does NOTHING for you. It's like having a handy shelf somewhere in your house but never putting anything on it.
Once you've installed the client on your computer and moved all your data from My Documents over to Dropbox it will take quite a while to upload all the data. Definitely plan on letting it work overnight and be aware that it may take even longer (3-4 days or more if you have a lot of pictures or music or movies).
Make sure (as in, actually check!) that whatever backup solution you are using is actually updating in the cloud every time you make a change to a file on your computer.
Some people make a strong case for backing up to an external hard drive or etc. I used to do that. It always depended on ME taking the initiative to do the backup. And I was very careful -- most often I backed up once every two years, but every once in a while I was so obsessive about it that I backed up more than once within a single year! HOPELESS! Don't rely on a system that requires your intervention - start using a backup system that works automatically!
----
It's only a matter of time before you lose data and are forced to rely on your backup. Are you prepared? Implementing these 2 simple steps will make that day a relatively painless one. Waiting until tomorrow to implement these 2 simple steps will make that day even more horrific than it could be!
posted by Peter Bowers at 3:18 AM
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