Back-Up Your Computer

It is so important to back-up your computer on a regular basis. If you have ever had your hard drive crash, then you know what is involved in trying to reconstruct all the data and most importantly the family pictures. So frustrating!!
Wikipedia defines back-up as follows:
In information technology, a backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is to back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup.^[1]

Backups have two distinct purposes. The primary purpose is to recover data after its loss, be it by data deletion or corruption. Data loss can be a common experience of computer users. A 2008 survey found that 66% of respondents had lost files on their home PC.^[2] The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from an earlier time, according to a user-defined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data are required. Though backups popularly represent a simple form of disaster recovery, and should be part of a disaster recovery plan, by themselves, backups should not alone be considered disaster recovery.^[3] One reason for this is that not all backup systems or backup applications are able to reconstitute a computer system or other complex configurations such as a computer cluster, active directory servers, or a database server, by restoring only data from a backup.
It is also suggested that you can use an external hard drive for back up of all of your personal photos. Many of my clients will back up all their photos to the EHD just in case. Of course there are other places that you can use for back up of your computer. There are various Google applications, (Google Pictures, Documents) where you can put those important items. As a certified photo organizer it is suggested that you have at least 3 places to back up your items. How many EHD's do you have laying around that are full? Make sure that you check them out periodically to make sure they still work correctly. I call it a "test drive" just to check them out to make sure they work. Some of the early EHD's were pretty small, and now that we all take so many digital photos we keep getting larger and larger EHD's.


There are several brands in the market place. I won't recommend one over the other, but you can do your research and get the one that works for you.
The cloud is also a place that you can use for computer back up. There are several companies that have good products. The prices seem to be pretty consistent across the industry. One that I recommend is called BackBlaze. 

 I currently have several 3-month FREE trials through BackBlaze that I am giving away. If you will contact me, I can give you the information for this special offer. First come first serve!

Check out my website at www.photoorganizingsolutions.net for more information about us.