The Importance of Backups

Today’s entry is a bit of free advice. It is important if you have a computer (which I assume you do as you are reading this screed) that you back it up regularly!

This point cannot be overemphasized!

I used to say this to my clients all the time when I was a consultant. I now till it to anyone who will listen. The reason is simple. “Things Go Wrong!”

I sent my PC in to be serviced recently and was somewhat surprised to see that they had decided to reformat the hard drive (and do nothing else) to fix an issue that was having with the fan that keeps the processor cool.

Why resetting the software would have been the fix to a hardware issue is beyond me, but there it is! Unfortunately, because I was not yet finished getting all the pictures from my fall travels uploaded to my photo sharing service, I would have lost all the pictures that I took for the last half of the year (…including this great photo of Dad digging horseradish…) if I hadn’t backed up my PC.

Wherever you are today, do yourself a favor: back-up your PC!

Don Bergquist – December 21, 2008 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA