The other day one of my buddies called me out of breath and left a message on my voice mail. “OH Kelly, I don’t know what to do…” the rest of what she said is the title of this blog entry. When I called her back, she was still in panic mode. Did I know anybody that could rescue her data from her computer? She took it to some computer guys down the road and they couldn’t retrieve anything from the drive, they suggested she send it away.

She wanted me to tell her something I couldn’t. She owns her own business and she is right, her life IS in that computer.

So I said, “You have a backup, right?”
She said, “C’mon that was what my sister asked me.” (I don’t even know her sister.)

Of course this means, “No.”

Don’t let this be you. Even if your whole life isn’t on your computer perhaps some other important stuff is. Photos, presentations, emails, stuff that you would miss if something happened. Stuff you couldn’t recreate or would take forever to recreate. But you know this all ready – so how many of you back things up?

With me, my rules, are pretty straight forward. It has to be simple and it has to remember things for me – cause I don’t stop and think, “When did I back this thing up, last?”

Since I have a MAC, I use the Apple utilities on the website, I can schedule the back up as well as store things remotely, which is pretty darn handy when I am on the road or I don’t have my computer with me, I can store email contacts and calendars too. Before I back up, “it” asks me if I want it to. So if I am going out to an appointment and don’t have the time for it to happen right then, I click “NO THANKS” – simple.

But also I am learning I don’t want EVERYTHING on my computer ALL the time and I am not connected to the internet ALL the time, so again I went to Best Buy – I know, but it is MY PLACE that I like to go- and for less than a hundred dollars (they are on sale now) – I bought a Western Digital – My Book Essential 500GB External Hard Drive. 500 GB! WOW! They have all sizes for more or less storage.

I can drag photos over to it, I can save my tunes to it and back up to it all in one compact thing that looks just like a book. This helps my computer from getting bogged down with photos from 2006! I still want them, but I dont NEED 3,116 photos on my computer – which reminds me – time to move some over to “My Book”!

Don’t take chances on the next lightning storm or a computer virus, or just a dead drive – you will spend a lot more than $100 rebuilding your life!