Got a really good scare last night

Hi Sara

Thank goodness you got it going again.

Lesson learned

As someone once said, remember computers are just machines. It's not a case of *if* they'll fail. It's *when* they'll fail.

Cheers,

Neil

You would have been fine either way; so long as you pulled the power source (Plugin/Battery) within around 60 seconds of the spill.

All you need to save is your hard-drive =] you could have just pulled it out, bought the proper reader and pulled the files up on your desktop.

I know what you mean as a few weeks back I had planned to spend a relaxing weekend doing nothing and on the Saturday morning my computer would not switch on. I started to panic as at first I thought the har drive had gone and I also had not backed anything up.

I became even more worried when there was a loud popping noise from the tower and a wisp of smoke. I was luck that it turned out to just be the power supply. So i spent all Saturday finding a new power supply and fitting it. I then spent most of Sunday morning backing everything up onto disk that I could not afford to lose.

I have definitely learned my lesson now and every thing gets backed regular onto rewrite disks.

Lesson learned from this,save your data online or offline whichever is fast/easy. I'm using evernote and amazon s3 and syncing it back and forth whenever i get some new data on computer. It takes some time but have to save it.

I personally use dropbox for my backups. Works great! And its free untill 2GB, so you can test it first to see if it works for you.

Luckily you didn't lose any data! Backups are crucial...I'm too paranoid about losing years of work so I:

1. Save all data to second internal drive, and keep the OS separate.
2. Back up the internal data drive to an external drive daily.
3. In case of fire...I use Mozy, an online automatic back up service similar to Carbonite...only $4.95/mo for peace of mind.

I manually backup my data by using an NAS (network attached storage). It works as a raid, meaning that whenever I copy data onto the raid it automatically makes two copies of it. So when the data gets copied onto disk 1 it immediately copies it onto disk 2 also.

I learnt that one backup hardrive just isnt enough. If that fails then your backup is no good.

The good thing is I have it on the network and can access the data remotely if need be.

I use a Buffalo NAS 1 TB in case you are in the market for one.

I do actually use my webhosting plan to also store some important data too in case I cant get access to the important documents on the NAS.

Here's a great little free backup program that does a good job and is fast. You can back up to local or on one of your domains. Heres the link:

Karen's Replicator

What's really cool about this software is that it only backs up files that have changed so once you do a full back up it only takes about 5 minutes to update every day. You can set it to run automatically, back up to different locations, and it keeps a log to show any problems. Keeps all files in native format, no compression to screw up the files. Rock solid little program.

I have seen Carbonite and other backup online systems fail way too many times to trust them. I get at least 2 calls a month on problems restoring from these services.

I bought a netbook and installed all my software and back up all data to it frequently. That gives me a bulletproof backup solution that I can just turn on and go regardless of what disaster strikes. The Netbook only cost $250 and it has come in handy already.

Regardless of what method you choose, test it to make sure you can restore. Never take anything for granted only to find out when you need it, something is not working.

It took 5 unrecoveral crashes/viruses to prompt me to buy an external hard drive
and actually do regular backups - even a few ( better a few small ones than one
big ) USB stick is better than nothing.

I recommend backing up in triplicate, in different formats. I use an external harddrive, I burn to DVD for archiving, and short term, I keep about a year's worth or so of work on a 4 GB USB key. Replace all backups bi-annually, as in make new copies on new hardware. Harddrives have a working lifespan, DVDs have a shelf-life, Flash media only has so many writes/rewrites before they fail. So backup, but always remember to backup the backup.