Today's True Confession is about computer backups. We all know to do them, but how dedicated are you to keeping your data backed up? I'll go first. I suck at doing routine backups. That's one reason why I decided to sign on with Carbonite.
However, as it turns out, I excel so highly in not doing backups that I managed to have a backup accident during the time when my Carbonite backup service had been interrupted (by my own stupidity). This recent backup accident makes other backup accidents in my past pale in comparison. Let me share the gory details with you.
Every month once in a while, I clone my entire hard drive with second hard drive. The last full clone backup was completed on March 31, 2010. Last week, I decided to do my monthly backup and set the program to do a full clone backup of my current hard drive.
About six hours later, satisfied that I was now fully and safely backed up, I opened Quicken 2010 Deluxe to see if I could figure out why my checking account information online shows that I have nearly four hundred dollars in my account, while Quicken (the last time I opened it) indicated I had less than ninety. All week long we avoided using the personal checking account since I didn't want us to overdraw the account.
Once Quicken loaded, to my surprise, the information in Quicken was from March.
I thought maybe the hard drives got switched, but slowly it dawned on me that I was in actuality not fully and safely backed up.
I realized with growing horror that the clone was performed incorrectly, in fact, the data had been cloned in reverse. Everything current (from March 31 to mid-July) had been overwritten with old data from March. Everything on my hard drive. Programs. Files. Photos. Everything. My heart skipped a beat and as it occurred to me that my Carbonite service had not performed a back up since April 7th (once again, user error).
Next I remembered that just ten days earlier I had moved Big A's birthday party photos, and my friend who had triplet's baby shower photos onto my hard drive to make more room on my camera card.
I inserted my camera card into my computer, hoping upon hope that I hadn't deleted those photos.
Through tears of sweat (thank you hot flashes), as I began looking at my camera card, I noticed a folder at the root named BACKUPS. The date last modified caught my eye: May 29, 2010.
Dear Lord, could it be? Did I somehow make a backup of the data most direly important to me? I said a silent prayer before opening the folder, and with relief realized indeed, I had made an emergency backup on May 29th of the two company files for Mr. A's businesses, my Excel spreadsheet and Quicken, the financial program I use to track our personal finances.
May 29th is better than March 31. I still have to recreate six weeks worth of data in those programs, and I've lost all scanned documents pertaining to Mr. A's business, and unfortunately my 2009 Income Tax returns. I use H & R Block's tax software
On the bright side, I did make a point to print out all supporting documentation for our taxes, thank goodness.
This week I'll be sharing some of the things I ended up having to do to recreate the lost data, so stay tuned since I'll be sharing more of my pain and agony.
Love,
Mrs. Accountability
I use dropbox. All you do is create a folder in your harddrive (or anywhere). Bring all docs you want backed up into it and it will be backed up in the cloud (fancy word for online servers)..Create another dropbox folder in another computer and all your files from the cloud get synced in that new computer…
works in you have a PC and MAC – works like a charm for me! (I sync my itunes this way as well!)
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I use dropbox – works on both mac and pc. You create an account and a “dropbox” folder on your computer. Put all the documents you want into the “dropbox folder” (you can create sub-folders too) and it will “sync” with the cloud. If you buy another computer, simply login into dropbox and create a dropbox folder on that computer and the files will sync!
Works like a charm (in fact, my itunes are saved and synced across computers with dropbox!)
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Confession. I have never backed up my laptop. Ever.
More of a confession: I have two available hard drives to backup my laptop to. I’ve just never done it.
I did clean a closet out this weekend? Does that offset the crime of not backing stuff up? Because I was busy accomplishing something else?
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Melissa
then try dropbox – free for first 2GB of data – so as long there is no photos or songs or movies! it should work like a charm!
Mr CC
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they say there are 2 types of people…. those who have lost data and those that will. Hard drives fail eventually, usually at the worst possible moment.
I know people that have used computers at home for years and never backed them up. Bad idea.
You can get an external USB hard drive for about $100…. and free backup software… it’s cheaper than paying someone $500 or more to get the data from the drive for you.
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