One of my relatives had her house broken into and the thief stole her and her daughter’s laptop computers. I think this is about as bad as having your wallet stolen – maybe worse depending on what you’ve got loaded on your machine. Yikes!
Well, today I’m reminding readers to BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER FILES! If you are really on the ball, you’d regularly dump your files onto a flash drive – and maybe even store your most personal files on a special flash drive that you hide away in a drawer… I say this as I see my flash drive sitting out in plain view. Ideally, when important files are complete and will not be changed you will copy them onto a CD or DVD, maybe making two different sets and storing them in different places. Of course, you will need to keep an eye out for technology changes and re-copy those files onto new CDs or who knows what other kind of storage methods will come in the future. There are even archival quality CDs and DVDs to help prevent aging of the media. By the way, remember to label files as well as outsides of the storage media so you can easily find whatever you may need to look for. Consider also the value of keeping a hardcopy of your most treasured files, especially photos which can last up to 70 years if commercially printed and if stored properly.
All my mother’s memories are loaded onto CDs – the original Word file of our book Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, all the illustrations and photos, audio clips, the book trailer plus my more important business files. Personally I’m more worried about a glitch in the computer or a virus attack rather than a thief, but you never know. Once my daughter spilled milk on my keyboard and I had a panic; fortunately after a couple days of drying out, the computer worked again.
So remember to keep up with the computer backups so you don’t lose your own written or photographed memories of who and what’s important in your life.
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