cardinalkarp wrote:Is it just me or am I the only one that doesn't keep alot of important info on my computer?
I should probably keep more stuff (scanned copies of my mortgage note, title to my car etc) but the stuff that I was glad I didn't lose when my computer broke was stuff like scanned photos of me and my family at Disney Land when I was 8 years old, a college paper I wrote, ads I had created, and of course, the mp3's.
This is pretty much how I am. Plus about 5,000 or so digital pictures I've taken over the years. Given, if I lost them one day, it wouldn't be the end of the world--it's just pictures. But I keep them all backed-up, just in case I ever lose my harddrive. Lots easier to do that on an external harddrive or two than to burn 200 cd's with the pictures on them.
maddash wrote:You can find a nice 500 GB drive for around $150. Storage is just so freaking cheap these days.
The brands I like are Fantom, Maxtor, LaCie, and Western Digital - although I'd avoid the really small models, you just don't get the air flow you need in the small models and you're more likely to move them while the drive is still spinning.
I always recommend that people put all their important info on a drive like this and keep it near the door, or in a fire safe. You might lose your house to a fire or whatever, but at least you'll have all the info you'll ever need on a drive you can easily take with you.
Yep. I have a 500 GB external hard drive that I back up pictures and work docs. Mass storage is cheap now, but I still have the pictures backed up to DVDs.
Edit: You mention a fire safe, but some of those basic fire safes can actually ruin storage electronic media such as flash drives or external hard drives...
Microsoft has a free program called Sync Toy that will automatically synchronize your hard drive with a backup device. You can run it with Wndows Task Scheduler or wahtever it's called to have it auto-back up whenever you want it to.
