How and how often to back up?
Well that depends on a lot of factors... For me, the most important thing on that computer was my photos. I KNEW I should have been backing up each and every time I downloaded the photos from the camera to the hard drive. I could have done this in a few ways:
- I have networked computers in my house so I could have send copies to the other computer.
- I use Yahoo to share pictures. I could have created a private album and stored a copy there. (I did that to share Christmas pictures with family so I have Christmas 2005)
- I have a 512MB memory stick (hard drive that plugs into the USB port). I now plan to use this as my photo backup. Every time I dump the pictures from my camera, I'm going to make copies on the memory stick. When it gets full, I'll download to CD.
- You can use R/W CDs. They are more expensive than regular CDs. I have not yet tried them, but you are suppose to be able to "add" files as you go. This is why I didn't backup before. The thought of putting
20-50 photos on a CD that could hold 500X more than that was just wasteful to me. Yet it took me about a year's worth of pictures to have enough to fill one CD.
- Hard copies. I didn't want to invest in having hard copies made and I didn't want to have to store hard copies because I felt I could get them printed at any time. They're gone now and I will never have the chance again.
These are just a few ways. Frequency depends on what you can stand to loose. I like Lynne's reference to "will it make you cry if you lost it" reference? Yes, it made me cry to know all those pictures are gone.
-- Amy L.