The Pain of a Lost Memory

I picked up a copy of Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard (www.apple.com) product which gives you "Time Machine" over the weekend. I have to say it's a great product. Time Machine makes it simple, nay, even fun to backup my data. All I do is flip a switch and my data is backed up for me automatically, no ifs ands or buts. A simple click and I can retrieve a document I may have accidentally deleted without thinking first.

Time Machine does require an external hard drive, but that's simpler to achieve than configuring complex backup software.

And as an earlier commenter noted, off-site backups are equally important in case of theft or natural disaster. I use MediaMax (www.mediamax.com) to handle my off-site backups. It's been fast and reliable for me for the past several years.

heatherv93,

People like you might want to look into some of data recovery companies out there. You may need to send your hard drive itself out, but If certain parts of your HDD are still functioning (such as the tape that is on the hard disk itself), they may be able to recover your data with special equipment. There is little that a technician at a regular PC shop can do to a restore a hard drive if some physical parts have failed... and they often don't suggest this as a remedy to customers. But us geeks know better, so it helps to have that friend who will suggest these things, when someone over the counter won't go out of their way to tell you this.

I was talking about this with a friend previously as she just lost some personal data... I currently keep THREE-yes-THREE back ups of my data, but keep in mind this data is almost exclusively music and personal art work and renders I have done over the period of 10 years. I actually lost two of my backups in one night trying to get my fiance's hard drive to come back to life. He almost lost about 60-80Gs worth of his own personal data... the final backup was on my laptop, which was untouched.

Getting the message, I have now burned all my personal digital works and renders onto DVD disks and I plan to put that in my safe deposit box A.S.A.P. One back up is sometimes not enough! Even for us geeks, it's possible to lose data in extenuating circumstances... that's why it's always good to have one solid state back up (CD, DVD, etc) and if possible, a second hard drive to keep up with what is going on with your data on going so you can keep backing it up when it's not possible to get to a burner. Sony blue ray--when the drives get cheaper--will make this easier because the disks hold 25G on one layer. But it's still the consumer's responsibility to back up their data...

Most of us are just plain lazy.
A great solution is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives)
Wiki explains the concept very well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Hard drives are so cheap now that all important data should be backed up.

I'm a tehcnologically literate baby boomer. This means I view ALL electronic data stroage media as unreliable and untrustworthy backup tools. So, I keep electronic documents and digital photos and music on my computer and IPod, but also print the documents and photos, burn the music onto CDs and store copies in fireproof places in fireproof places like safes and bank deposit boxes.. It's a little unwieldly and sometimes a nuisance, but I know I won't be SOL the next time there's an EMP, a motherboard brain-fart or a fire or flood or earthquake.

sorry about the double post....

The article's headline (the most appropriate one I have ever seen) says everything; I can attest to this. I had noticed problems with my computer and was planning to save all my documents and photos to CD's over a long weekend. My computer crashed two days before and I lost everything. The worst was losing three years' worth of photos of my children, holidays, and vacations, all things I can never get back. I cried for two solid hours once I realized they were gone, and cried again when a computer repair pro told me they were irretrievable.

The irony of it all is that I preach to my kids to save their documents early and often so they don't lose any of their hard work on papers, projects, etc. Fortunately, I still have a lot of our memories on video, but I have learned a hard, painful lesson about backing up data early and often.

The article's headline (the most appropriate one I have ever seen) says everything; I can attest to this. I had noticed problems with my computer and was planning to save all my documents and photos to CD's over a long weekend. My computer crashed two days before and I lost everything. The worst was losing three years' worth of photos of my children, holidays, and vacations, all things I can never get back. I cried for two solid hours once I realized they were gone, and cried again when a computer repair pro told me they were irretrievable.

The irony of it all is that I preach to my kids to save their documents early and often so they don't lose any of their hard work on papers, projects, etc. Fortunately, I still have a lot of our memories on video, but I have learned a hard, painful lesson about backing up data early and often.

I keep everything I need on my iomega 250GB Hi-Speed USB 2.0 external harddrive as a backup. It fits inside a shirt pocket (for size reference, not recommended). I have all my kids pictures (6+ years worth) in digital format and had an incident about 5 years ago where my laptop crashed hard. Fortunately someone was able to retrieve the image files as well as a few other things, but the majority of the harddrive was trashed and while I waited to see if everything was lost, I promised it would never happen again.

So, I have my laptop, and a "carbon copy" in external format...heck, it's only $200 for complete piece of mind.

...And as the pictures are that precious to me, I also have them zipped, locked, and uploaded to my local host (which has redundant servers, so I'm double covered there as well). What can I say, I'm in the IT industry and understand what it means to lose everything you have and have done in a second's notice.

As inexpensive and easy as it is to do, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't.

Funny that I came across the article just as I backed up my pics before I left the house. I couldn't imagine losing all the pictures and video of my daughter from the day she was born until now, three years later. I need to make a better plan of doing it. For the time being, we have a external backup drive that backs up every evening. I also download all the pics my wife uploads from the camera to my desktop, so we have three areas. Any time I made a DVD, I make a backup of that and keep it at the office just in case something terrible would happen at home. Thanks for the article!!