This is one of our most discussed topics in the shop. We cannot highlight well enough how important it is to keep copies of your photos, documents and other valuable things as there’s never a 100% assurance that your internal computer hard drive is going to last forever. And accidents happen, unfortunately. So, hopefully, after reading these five tips you’d want to dust off that external hard drive you got some time ago with good intentions and back up.
1. Make good memories last forever.
You holiday pictures, Birthday videos, confirmation pictures – you really want to keep these for a long time. Considering that most of us don’t print pictures anymore, you don’t want to lose these for future generations to come. So, back up photos from special events as soon as you get them and…[to the next point]
2. Back up once. Back up twice.
The things that are most important to you. You might want to have a drive that you back up to and also another drive that you copy that backup to every now and them but keep it safely away from the possible accidents (like dropping it). Again, for things you truly want to keep for a long time, you’d want to do this.
3. Prioritise your backup
Some people just copy the entire content of their computer hard drive to the external hard drive. This creates mess, and also takes a lot of space you could have used for the things that really matter. Backup only things you can’t reproduce: pictures, your own videos, rare music. If you purchased some tunes in iTunes or by other digital means – you can always download it again from the cloud – so need to download them on your backup drive.
4. Keep copies of important documents
Old payslips, copies of official documents, bills and so on – but things you don’t get digitally mostly. Scan the documents that you think are important as you never know when you’ll need them in the future.
5. Back up regularly when working on an important project
So many times we’ve seen people come through the door with a desperation written across their face asking to possibly retrieve their thesis/exam paper/other long form document from a hard drive that’s either crashed or riddled by viruses. So. Many. Times. When you’re working on such a document you should be thinking of saving it it first hand. Make a habit of pressing CTRL+S after finishing a sentence and make a habit of saving the document on an external drive or even emailing to yourself when you’re done. Possibly as a separate document each time – you never know what you can pick up from a previous version.
So, we hope you’re inspired to get your back up on. If you don’t have an external drive – we suggest you get one. We’ve got a good selection of different drives in right now starting at €6.99 (for a memory stick).