That sick feeling in the pit of your stomach...

by jeffmull

Posted: 13 years ago 19 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

You know that sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when something goes terribly wrong?

Imagine how you would feel right now if your hard drive just failed. Because let's face it, hard drives are mechanical equipment and they do fail.

The reason I'm writing this post is because I was once again reminded of how many people do not have good backup systems for the computers. This reminder was in the form of yet another customer requesting the download link because their computer had died and they had lost all their information.

Whenever I see these emails I think of how awful that person must feel.

But I also think about how easily it could be avoided. These days there is no excuse to not have a solid backup system in place.

The one I am using is called mozy.com

It cost me less than five dollars per month and it backs up everything I want from my computer over the Internet in encrypted form to their servers. I never noticed this happening because it does so in the background. I don't have to remember anything because it is all automatic.

All of my documents, photos, downloaded e-books, and anything else I want is safe.

This gives me tremendous peace of mind because I can imagine the detrimental impact a computer failure could have
on my business.

If you are not 100% sure that you have a good backup strategy in place, I highly recommend you at least visit that website and protect your business and personal digital assets.

No affiliate link. This is far more important than making a couple of bucks.

Practice Safe Computing,

Jeff Mulligan

#back up #backup #feeling #mozy #pit #sick #stomach

Rocked Steady 13 years ago

thank you very much for the post...and the reminder.

In high school, I once accidentally put a magnet too close to my hardrive on my laptop. Instant crash. I lost all of my high school pictures, mp3's, essay's, college apps etc. It was HORRIBLE. I highly recommend to everybody finding a good back up solution. Otherwise, you will learn a very hard lesson.
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dvduval 13 years ago

I would be totally fine. I could junk this laptop in the dumpster right now, and be up and running on a new computer in an hour. I have everything important in the cloud, and backed up multiple times. I don't need any sort of hardware at my home.
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bobbobson 13 years ago

Good advice. Personally, I use a 32gb flash drive to back up the key stuff (and eventually burn them to DVDs). I use Amazon S3 for distributing my products, but have a couple of folders set aside there for my key stuff too.

Good post, good reminder.
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Zabrina 13 years ago

Thanks for the reminder! I'm also going to look into mozy.com.

If you literally have nothing to spend and/or only have a limited amount of crucial stuff to back up, I recommend Dropbox. I've been using it for years now and I'm very happy with it. PM me if you want a referral so you and I both get an additional 250 MB of space each.

The other thing I do is back up to an external hard drive, but I left that at my apartment at school and I'm home for the holidays. I'll have to be careful with my laptop.

I've had two crashes before: one where my power cord died and I had no way of getting a new one for two days, which really put a damper on my week, and the other where the hard drive itself died. The second was more devastating, of course, but I'd taken a back up a couple of months beforehand so I only lost the most recent stuff.
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DireStraits 13 years ago

You highlight an important point here: a hard-drive failure, or indeed data loss of any type for any other reason, is a great inconvenience for almost anyone. But it's potentially far more than just an inconvenience for those who are running a business, and whose livelihoods could very well depend on the existence and integrity of their data.

And yet, quite often, the thought of taking precautionary measures (i.e. backups) can all too easily escape us when everything is running soundly, when there are no warning signs or alarm-bells to alert us of an impending atrocity, and when our minds are focused on seemingly more pressing day-to-day matters.

I've had a few sudden hard-drive failures over the past few years myself, and I admit that I wasn't best prepared for them, despite being a reasonably technologically-competant person.

The answer is harsh, but simple: get it backed up, or else suck it up when things go "wrong" - and wrong they will go, at some point in time.

These days I take regular backups of my most important files, and copy them between a couple of high-capacity USB memory-sticks.

Fingers crossed, barring a house-fire - or perhaps a strong electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation - I should be okay. But then, since I tend to carry least one USB stick with me wherever I go, I can't see myself being in much need of my data anyway, should one of the two aforementioned scenarios play out, for obvious reasons.
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4morereferrals 13 years ago

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jasonmorgan 13 years ago

8GB thumbdrive
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TNTDiet 13 years ago

Do you know if mozy allows you to back up any kind of file?

The problem I have with a lot of online backup services is that they don't allow you to store anything besides pictures and documents.
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Fun to Write 13 years ago

I've had my computer crash before, and I didn't have everything backed up. All current stuff was gone. Luckily, I worked somewhere at the time that had an in house computer tech guy. He was nice enough to get me back in action for free.

Now I have important files on several flash drives.
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ShazLeghari 13 years ago

Hi,

Yes it is very crucial to back up your data and files for your business especially if you have ebooks, lists, pictures, websites etc.

I have seen many back up services but this is far one of the most versatile back service iv heard as it does back many files formats from pictures, html documents etc.

Nice one dude and the service is pretty cheap for what is offering.
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scrofford 13 years ago

I use my Western Digital External hard drive and back up everything
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- Jeff Henshaw 13 years ago
  
  I use my Western Digital External hard drive and back up everything
  
  I've got four WD External Hard Drives and believe it or not - one of them failed last night! Fortunately I have 99% of the data that it contained mirrored on another external drive.
  
  I'm still pretty ticked off about it though.
  
  Jeff.
  
  Thanks
  
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lilphilupt 13 years ago

[DELETED]

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- grantsja 13 years ago
  
  Good reminder. I use carbon copy. A word of warning if you solely rely on external drives - my sister backed up her important files to an external drive. They broke in one day and stole her laptop and the drive. I like my files backed up AND offsite.
  
  Thanks
  
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bobsstuff 13 years ago

Hard drives and thumb drives are fine, but if you have a fire in your home and you are not there to rescue the media, it is lost anyway. If you backup copies are not daily moved off-site, you could lose everything.

Online backup makes a lot of sense. mozy.com and carbonite.com are the two I have heard most about on this forum.
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Racquel_McFarlane07 Banned 13 years ago

Wow, thanks so much for psoting this. i do graphic design work as well and I was just thinking how crazy it is that I haven't backed anything up at all. I'm gonna mozy on over to mozy.com

Thanks!
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Laura B 13 years ago

It's so easy to get complacent and think it's not going to happen. Seems like as soon as you say that to yourself, your hard drive crashes and you get that sick feeling you mentioned. The peace of mind you'll have knowing you've got backups is not to be underestimated. I speak from experience.
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jeffmull 13 years ago

I would never rely on a thumb drive to backup my data. Way too easy to lose, sit on, get stolen, etc. I've used both carbonite and Mozy and they both work very well. You can back up whatever type of file you want with mozy. I have mozy on my kid's computer and I just checked. It's 26 gigs backed up.

It is set to backup their downloads folder, so any programs they download are also backed up.

Jeff Mulligan
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- KatyaSenina 13 years ago
  
  I just use a flashdrive. Works for me.
  
  Thanks
  
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Jesus Perez 13 years ago

My hard drive failed in Feb 2009. I would have lost everything (videos, pics, client files) if it wasn't for Mozy.

Within 1 hour, I had all critical "I need this now" files downloaded.
Within the next week, the rest of my backup downloaded.

Mozy works brilliantly. Highly recommended since all hard drive (external/internal) fail within ~5 years or so. I'm walking proof.

By the way, even if you keep a local backup on an external drive, you're not protected. Think "fire" or "oops...I dropped it".
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