When I was a kid, my Mom had a bunch of photo albums and boxes of pictures. What was her backup? The shoebox of negatives that was kept in the closet. Should anything ever have happened to a print, all she had to do was retrieve the negative and reprint it! So simple.
Where is that shoebox today? It’s inside your computer. And specifically, it’s the hard drive in your computer. Seriously. Think about it – all the pictures you take are put on your computer – on your hard drive. From there, you might print some. You might upload some to one of the many online photo sites. You might email some to friends or family. But I doubt that you ever mail, upload or do anything much with ALL of them. That means you are subject to a single point of failure. And many things can lead to that failure – a virus, a system failure, or many of other ways.
Every picture I have taken (digitally) is now stored on at least 3 hard drives – inside my primary computer, on an external hard drive that sits next to my computer, and on a FreeAgent Go portable external hard drive that I carry with me in my backpack. I rest much easier knowing that the precious memories of my children’s lives are protected and safe.
There are two primary reasons to backup your computer: 1) prepare yourself to be up and running again as quickly as possible in the event of a system failure, and 2) make sure that you never lose your most valuable and precious content – your pictures, memories, videos, music and other important files.
It’s amazing to me that, in this day and age of everything digital, people by in large still are not protecting themselves. It really isn’t either all that difficult of expensive! For under $100 today, you can replicate and protect more than just your pictures, but your music collection and videos as well! That’s a small price to pay for something so incredibly valuable, and, quite frankly, probably the only piece of irreplaceable content you have – have you figured out a way to turn the clock back to take that picture again?
Please… Do yourself a favor… Buy an external hard drive and backup your computer today. I promise you’ll sleep better.
Hi: I have a Seagate back up unit RWTUV Part # 9w6044-560 Serial number 6JS8LFOQ. I have acquired a new computer with Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. Where do I find the Seagate software to operate with the new Windows 7 system? Thank You Jim