Before disaster strikes and you kick your computer, back-up your digital archiveIn today's digitally minded world, backing up your stuff is critical to keeping sane. Imagine losing all the pictures of your five year old because of a faulty computer drive.
Backing up is one thing we forget to do mostly because we have this little guy in our head that says, "Eh, this is digital. It's not going anywhere. We will always will have these pictures."
This might well be the case but you never know when disaster will strike. To head off disaster, here are some tips to back up your digital archive of memories.
Burn Baby Burn and Burn
Blank CDs and DVDs are extremely cheap these days. So, snatch up a few hundred -- yes a few hundred -- and burn your pics and videos to disc. In fact, make two or three copies of your discs. Why that many copies you ask? Easy, take one copy to work and put a second copy in a safe deposit box or fire proof box in your house.
Facebook, Flickr and Picasa
Yes, we all send a ton of pics to Facebook, but why not duplicate your stuff at Flickr or Picasa to ensure online backup. You might not keep then latter two public but at least have up there so you can pull copies from various places if you need to.
Go External Drive, Twice
Don't keep your pics on your PC or Mac hard drive. Keep them on an external hard drive. In fact, get two and have one as a mirrored backup. They are so cheap these days and I would recommend a Fantom drive. They had yet to fail me and are relatively cheap for a ton of space.
Spend Some Money
Your memories are too precious to lose them. Spend some money on online storage services. There are a ton of them out there, but select one that fits your needs and content volume.
Do It Often
The biggest barrier to backing up is simply time. After all, we take pictures in bursts of 100s. That adds up after a while. No on wants to sit down and spend a day burning discs and uploading. I suggest to backup once per month.
So before you lose a lifetime of memories, do yourself a favor and back-up.
How do you back-up? Other advice you'd add?