You don’t backup? Be afraid…be very afraid.
by abesofmaine ~ October 24th, 2008. Filed under: Cameras, Compact Digital Cameras, General Info, Home Audio/Video, Musical Instruments, ProAudio, SLR Digital Cameras, Studio Tips, Uncategorized.In light of Halloween slowly creeping up on us, allow me to relay this short horror story:
17 year old Stacy is home alone curled up on the couch on a stormy, thunderous night. Blinding lightning flashes outside the window and suddenly…the lights go out! Scared stiff, she looks for solace and safety in her bedroom. She slowly opens the door, walks inside and sits down on the bed when suddenly…the lights flicker back on! For a brief moment Stacy feels at ease and then she realizes the terrifying reality of what is right behind her…her computer hasn’t turned back on!! She quickly tries to turn it on, but it’s no use. The hard drive is fried from the direct lightning hit on the house! That’s when shock sets in…because Stacy never backed up her thousands of photos that she took with her digital camera!! They’re gone!! FOREVER!! AAAAAAUUUUGGHHH!!!!
Ok, I admit, that was a bit dramatic. But let’s talk seriously for a sec. We’ve all had some sort of crisis where we once thought we lost, or actually did lose a whole lot of files, photos, videos, documents, etc. It’s a terrible and sometimes frightening feeling. The remedy though, is regularly backing up your files. And there are lots of ways to do it. USB flash drives and memory cards are so inexpensive these days, and the price of memory has dropped so much that even an external hard drive with hundreds of gigabytes is within reach of most peoples budgets. Get in the habit of backing up your files, and let Abe’s of Maine help you. Believe me, if you don’t…you’ll regret it! MWA HA HA HA! (sorry, got caught up again).
Do you have a “backup” story? Let’s hear it. Maybe its a horror story, maybe you have a great and efficient system to backup your files. Share it with us. (The first 100 commenters will receive a promo code for $15 off of your next purchase of $100 or more).
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October 24th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
One day before the final for my thesis… long night… lot´s of coffee… everything was prepared, almost ready, everything stored on the magic pen drive… but then in the morning by chance I mess up with two the same pen drives and I deleted my 8 months thesis… just one click and gone…
So many tears… but then… I just discovered that it´s possible to recover the file from the drive.. so it worked, but… since then I always make at least 2 backups!
October 25th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Well she didnt know the golden rules of backup did she… ??
1) always have a backup
2) backup the backup
October 26th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I totally agree with “backing up” files. After having learned a big lesson with losing them before, I now use a Western Digital external drive to store all my photos and videos. I’m certain all my precious memories are safe and secure there.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I made a few $$$’s doing back ups. First it was floppys to Zip Disks. The, I’d take Zips to CD’s, and finally, CD’s to DVD’s. I made enough along the way to pay for my equipment and have some change left over to spend at Abe’s. In 22 years of computing, I’ve never lost a file because I’ve backed up to other media and hard drives. It’s a worthwhile habit!
October 27th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
You have to get in the habit of backing up. We remind each other regularly at our small office. Since my computer has quite a bit of correspondence and no spreadsheets, etc., it’s quick and easy. At home, I have thousands of photo images backed up on a separate external hard drive. I don’t even connect it unless I’m transferring, since it’s mghty tough to fry it when it’s not connected. (Sort of the reverse of hoping to win the lottery when you didn’t even buy a ticket……that REALLY makes for long odds!)
October 28th, 2008 at 3:31 am
So….I, am an absolute music lover who believes the “ipod” is the greatest invention since sound itself and heaven sent, for those of us who are literally music freaks and by far, the greatest gift…EVER. When it comes to computers however, i must admit shamefully, I am completely lost but trying now more than ever. After a couple of years and loooots of time creating my dream come true music library which contained close to 12,000 of my favorite songs . I started having some issues with my desktop. I purchased a laptop and left it in the care of someone else to transfer my music to the new one, happy now that i could take this along with me everywhere in order to become more computer savvy. Imagine my dismay when a week later my computer will not go on but only display this beautiful blue shade of blue which I now know is referred to as the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. Panic sets in and I am told it is the harddrive and needs to be replaced. I am asked if I have backed up the info as everything will be lost WHAT!!!!, was my only response. I call the person who transfered the music for me and am told he did not back anything up as he used a data transfer cable and believed i would be backing up from my laptop. This has been a traumatizing experience to say the least. Since I saw keeping lots of cds around as only clutter after transferring them into my Ipod the majority was given away so…… I can’t begin to convey the feeling of loss I still feel but, I have definitely learned and now know the meaning of BACK UP and you better believe i fo it often.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I was studying abroad in Australia and didn’t have the correct converter for my computer. I fried the mother board of my computer and lost everything! Fortunately I had all of my pictures saved on CDs back home. However, it was the most sickening feeling realizing that all the photos I had taken in the last three years were lost! Please back up your pictures and files. I save all of my photos to an external hard drive and periodically I burn them on to DVDs. Trust me…it’s worth it!!
October 30th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
We bought my DSLR two days before my child’s birth. I did a crash course on how to use it in anticipation. We have photos of my son’s first breath! Since I have taken over 5,000 photos. I know I need to back these up, but I’m not sure whether to use CDs or DVDs. I have so many that I feel that CDs would be pointless. Are DVDs a reliable backup method? I keep buying memory cards right now because I’m afraid to erase the cards! I definitely need advice… those photos are my child’s first everythings…. smiles, steps, hair cut, food…. They are priceless. So, please let me know the best way! … I pray my computer doesn’t crash!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
i don’t recommend portable flash based drives as they can sometimes be easily corrupted. have had that happen to me a couple of times.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I sometimes “backed up” files in my email accounts. Esp work related presentations. Once I forgot to bring my thumbdrive, just connecting to the internet saved me.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I still haven’t learned my lesson I guess…
After I graduated college, my desktop pretty much crashed. I had the motherboard replaced at one point. The hard drive was the next thing to go before I finally bought a whole new computer. Every picture that I had ever taken was on that darn computer! I hadn’t yet had a chance to get of my college graduation pictures printed either. I’ve pretty much gotten over all the other pictures, but it makes me pretty sick to my stomach whenever I think about not having any of my college graduation since I was the first and only of my brothers and sisters that ever finished.
You would think that I would have learned my lesson, but I haven’t. I am now a photographer for hire (don’t like to call myself professional cause I’ve got a lot to learn still). My new desktop likes to freeze up quite a bit too. I have an ungodly amount of pictures on my computer, including ones that I would never want to lose of my daughter. I just don’t know how to go about backing them all up. I know that putting them all on cd’s or dvd’s would take too long and would be a pain when it comes to knowing which ones are already backed up or not. I guess the logical choice maybe would be an external hard drive. The only thing with that is if I don’t necessarily trust my internal hard drive, why should I trust an external one? I guess I should just get over it, and do it already. Any advice about the best, but not most expensive, external drives would be appreciated. I don’t need to be able to travel around with it or anything. And is it ok to plug and unplug them a lot? I would think so, since if they were plugged in and lightening struck, they would fry along with my main hard drive… And when you backup to them do they give a notification of a file already being on there: i.e. this file already exists… that way I wouldn’t have to organize everything into backed up or not backed up. hope that makes sense (i feel like i’m rambling).
Maybe I’ll learn my lesson soon. After writing this, I think it’s making me realize how stupid I’ve been to not backup yet! Thanks Abe’s!
November 8th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
hi,
it is awesome , i got a digicam with great price!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 9th, 2008 at 5:54 am
After having a friend lose everything with a hard drive failure, I now make sure I back up everything……….documents, photos, music, etc……with a portable hard drive. A separate hard drive is easy to plug in, and you can increase your safety factor by plugging it in only when backing up. If you don’t have a backup device, you never know when you might lose your treasures (and then be kicking yourself for a long time for your inaction). So, get that backup device….and have some peace of mind. Then you can get back to worrying about world affairs, nuclear proliferation, sinking economy, universal healthcare, rogue asteroids, etc.
November 10th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I bought a great camera from Abe’s, and had taken some wonderful photos. However, when my 4 gig card was becoming cluttered, I decided to move them onto an inexpensive no-name flash drive that I bought from a local big box store. What a mistake! Rather than backing the photos up onto a reliable HD, I deleted everthing after having moved it onto the little cheepo flash drive! Then, to my chagrin, I discovered that the drive was corrupt! So about 10% of my pictures were lost forever. Fortunately, none of the best were damaged, but boy did I learn my lesson. BACK EVERYTHING UP FIRST!
November 10th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I backup everything to an external HDD and to a DVD. One day my external HDD fell down and stopped working.. I fortunately had all those files on a dvd too.. that saved my 2 years worth of photos and videos. Backup to more reliable devices such as DVDs will help you in situations like this.
thanks!
November 12th, 2008 at 2:01 am
I had an external hard drive to back up my valuable pictures and music files, but I didn’t consider what if the external hard drive breaks. Now I back up everything in two external hard drives.
November 12th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
So I thought I had the perfect backup for important files and pictures…. I kept a copy on my wife’s machine. About 2 years ago we divorced. I did not remember that my precious backups were on her machine until about a month later when my machine crashed.
Needless to say, she had taken her machine with her. Also, because I was the techology one, she would not trust me to copy the files. About nine months later, my son brought me a thumb drive with my files. Whew! I had written off ever seeing them again.
Now, I use two external hard drives. Lesson learned… a backup is not a backup if you can’t get to the files.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
USB thumb drives are great ways to transport files and for back up. But be sure to back them up as well. It’s easy to loose them for one thing because the size is so small. More importantly, if you unplug it from the computer without “ejecting” it properly, sometimes the whole drive gets corrputed.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I back up every thing,
November 18th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I’m glad I burned photos to CD I have had two computers die on me. Also like to upload images to Snapfish, Costco, etc… type places; although they are usually uploaded at a signficantly lower quality than the originals, even though I shoot jpegs.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I am in the business of working with other people’s photographs. I create custom coffee table books working with sometimes upwards of 2000 large digital images. So I should know better, right? Somehow I forgot the golden rule about backing up and also Murphy’s Law. I had a photographer’s portfolio of work to create a book for him to show to art galleries. He needed the discs back right away as they were originals. I didn’t have a back up drive on hand. Needless to say, I copied them to my hard drive, sent the discs back to the customer and my system promptly crashed. It was definitely a nightmare on Elm street for me. Now I have two back ups for redundancy sake and sleep better at night.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:45 am
I always back up all my entire files using Ipod,my hitachi hard drive and my other komputer also…but you have to consider other option also like online storage …..
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:03 pm
My hard drive crashed. Luck for me 1 week before the crash I purchased a external HD for back up. Everything was safe. But had it been 1 week before and everything would have been gone. I took it one step further and purchased another external HD and now have two back ups
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Make you backup on flash disk’s… easy!
November 25th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I rarely backup my files but store the same data in two computers (desktop/laptop). But after my desktop HD crash; I lost everything in the desktop. Now I am thinking of storing the data in to external drives.
During black Friday sale , planning buy minimum 2 to 3 portable hard drives. Never brought anything from abeofmaine but got good feedback from friends.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I backup things to external hard drives and online. For backing up my pictures I use zoto.com. It has unlimited storage and is great for organizing photos. You can also download full rez pictures when ever you want. For other media I backup to my website, hosted with bluehost.com. They also have unlimited storage.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
There are several online backup utilities that are perfect for this. Thats what we do.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Great advice! We learned the hard way. We now have a time capsule
November 30th, 2008 at 5:48 am
I use Apple’s Time Machine (built-in backup/versioning for Mac OSX). I use a different Time Machine drive at home and at work, which gives me nice redundancy if either building burns down. But that only covers my laptop. My desktop uses Time Machine plus my web host’s gargantuan disk space allotment for an offsite carbon copy.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
A few years ago a software company selling practice management systems to veterinarians was being run out of a house in Florida. A hurricane hit and wiped out the house. All of the source code was lost and the company had to go out of business.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 am
I backup my important data on an ACOM .5 TB external hard drive. It works great!
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
I fortunately have never been unfortunate enough to lose any files that were that important. I do however make an attempt to back up anything that I might remotely be lost without on either a flash drive or an online storage bin. It’s sad that we are so reliant on technology this way, but what can you do?
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
My last PC build has a Raid setup. In over 15 years of computing, i’ve never lost a hard drive. (knocking on wood)
But i have always copied the irreplaceable files on a second physical drive, and now, on a flash drive. Photos and certain documents aren’t replaceable, so i back those up. I also back up mp3’s since some of them were very hard to find, and that was on Napster…when things were free!
December 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I recently purchased a WD My Passport 500 gb portable hard drive. Very inexpensive - I use it as storage for all of my digital photos and negative scans.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
guess I need to learn how to back up files for my many pics I took on my Panasonic. No need to take a chance.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
A friend just called me and said they had a virus on their PC and had the HD wiped to remove it. Unfortunately, they didn’t back up the PC. Now they lost thousands of digital pix and 20,000 songs.
Back Up!