Maybe I should run a backup today

I spent much of my day working with a client who had lost everything on his hard drive. The motor died. We checked with a couple of data recovery services on the web and one said it would cost $1100 to recover, the other said the price would start at $599 (lowest possible estimate).

I have seen clients lose important information before and it is heart breaking, but it was what my client said later that I think is of note.

People often ask us how often they should back up or how they should backup. While the answers to these questions vary, there is one time that you should always backup everything that is important.

My client said, "I thought about backing all of this stuff up last week." If there is one indicator that you should back everything up it's when that little voice in your head says, "Gosh it sure would be awful if I lost all of this stuff." Not to be superstitious, but experience has shown me first hand on several occasions that this is often a good rule to follow.

In fact, just two weeks ago, I thought about how bad it would be if our computers were stolen or our house burned down. I have a backup hard drive and some backup DVDs, but I didn't have any backup stashed in a safe place outside of our house.

So, I went to the store, bought a big pack of dual layer DVDs and backed up every photo and important file. No crisis has come since then, but I rest easier at night.

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