If you are one of the rare but lucky individuals who have yet experienced the panic and horror associated with finding out your computer died and took all your data with it, count yourself very lucky indeed! Using the law of averages, you will most likely experience this devastating loss at some point in your future, and it will - guaranteed - happen at the worst possible moment. Some computers are nice enough to give you some warning signs that death is imminent. Others aren’t quite as informative about their impending demise. So, before this happens to you - and it will! - sign up for an automated data backup service.
Unfortunately, for most of us, we tend to ignore safety precautions until we have been violated, one way or another. We don’t install home security systems until we have been robbed. We don’t learn self defense until we have been mugged. We don’t buy car alarms until our car has been stolen. And we don’t use backup services until we have lost everything on our computer. Forever.
Computer security is the same thing. We just figure that nothing can happen, or we believe it could, but we’re too busy to do anything about it. The money is rarely an issue in our postponing these decisions since the cost of a backup service is almost negligible. We just postpone until it’s too late - until all our documents, appointments, notes, journal entries, photos, and important projects are gone.
A few people at least buy an external hard drive, but if you don’t remember to back up every night, you are still going to have a problem if your computer has issues. Too often we look at that external hard drive and for some reason just looking at it makes us feel safe. A true false sense of security!
What happens? They suddenly remember they didn’t back up as often as they should have and find out that the document they need most is now in cyber-heaven someplace. No backup. No original.
Be proactive. You know your luck will run out someday, and it won’t be pretty. There are some wonderful companies online that will perform automatic backups for you throughout the day. Every time a document is changed, it gets backed up. Your chances of losing anything are slim.
Some of these services will give you a free trial without a credit card. Check them out! You’ll be happy you did.