Don’t forget to backup regularly!

While you’re out and about supporting small businesses today like your local camera store or local computer store, here’s a suggestion for your shopping list: an external hard drive or two.

Don’t forget to backup regularly this holiday season and throughout the year!

Why am I reminding everyone of this?

Well, funny you should ask…

You might have noticed that we haven’t added any new galleries lately.  There’s a reason for that…  The Frog’s main computer is with the computer doctor now (Visceral Concepts also fixes those contraptions) because it has a case of gray screen.  It turns on – Windows says it’s starting, and then it all goes gray…  Likely a hardware problem, as a Windows problem usually is indicated by a case of blue screen.  Neither one is usually good.

Anyway – this is about backing everything up.

I haven’t gotten to the point to where I have everything on the cloud.  I’ve been doing things the old fashioned way with my images – external hard drives.  The weekend before my computer died, I created two separate complete backups.  All of the image libraries and galleries are safe.

As a matter of fact, I had everything backed up but one (1) file when things went south.

Yes, that one file was extremely important.  Thanks for asking.  It was a book that I’d been working on.  I don’t know if that file is going to be recovered or if I get to start all over again.  I should find that out today or tomorrow.  (More to follow on the book, but not now.)

I handled it quite well.  No outward signs of panic.  No axe to the computer.  I just stared at it for a while…  The cats looked at me kind of funny, but then again that’s nothing unusual.external hard drive

So, the moral of this story for all of you out there is don’t forget to backup regularly!  Get a hard drive or two from a local small business, or start using a cloud service.  Just don’t forget to backup regularly!

You never know when a problem is going to rear its’ ugly head.

Oh – and when you’re closing that one file that isn’t backed up, and that little voice in your head says “hey – maybe you should back that file up!” – and another voice says “it’s only one file – what could happen?” – listen to that first voice.  If you’re wondering why I say that, well, I listened to the second little voice…  I was almost done with the book.