The Importance of Backing Up

I was doing a backup of my sites this week and got to thinking about backups in general. If you’re like I used to be, you’ve put off developing a backup solution for your personal and business files. I used to feel like a major data failure wouldn’t happen to me – that the chances were really low. Unfortunately I was wrong. After only having a new laptop for 3 months, I had a catastrophic hard drive failure. It just died and everything on it was gone. With my previous computer, I had an external hard drive set up to backup my files automatically every week. However, when I set up the laptop … I neglected to restart the backup system and when I had the crash, I lost three months worth of data: photos (ugh!), documents, design projects and purchases. I felt awful.

I know you’ve all heard about these situations. And you may think, oh yeah…I should really do that. So how about today? These days it is exceedingly easy to create a solid backup solution. Mine is redundant and it makes me feel very secure in the case of a data loss. I back up my 1TB computer hard drive to a 1TB external hard drive. I use SyncBack to automatically back up every single night. It’s free, customizable and works GREAT. I know I will never lose a day’s work if my computer crashes. I have sometimes used this to just restore a file or folder I messed up as well. Many new EHDs come with automatic backup software.

I have a second external hard drive as well. I used to keep all the personal use kits I bought just on an external drive because my laptop hard drive was too small. The second external drive was a backup of the first external drive. Yes, they fail too! I believe their failure rate might be a little higher than a computer hard drive so this is another reason to back up any external drives that are the only location of your files. This extra external is now an archive drive – things I have an extremely low probability of needing any time….like the layered Photoshop files of layouts and designs from 2006 LOL. Or design files that have been delivered to the client and paid for.

I also have cloud storage – of EVERYTHING: my computer AND the archive EHD. (The backup EHD is the exact same as my computer). Why? Because my computer and external drive are both sitting in the same place so if there was a disaster or theft…everything would be gone. I use BackBlaze. It runs in the background and is extremely simple to set up.

You probably have a lot of time and money invested in your pictures, documents, digital kits and design files. Compared to the value of those things and the extreme price of recovering them from a failed drive a few hundred dollars invested in an external drive and cloud storage is just a smart business move. Now go get started today!

GOING TO THE NEXT LEVEL

In case you missed it, there is a fantastic opportunity coming up to learn a LOT about marketing your digital scrapbook design business. This will be a special session of Biz Camp over at Create More Media this fall. Jennifer will be covering things like mailing lists, social media, marketing and blogging.  This is an incredible online resource for digital scrapbook design professionals that would be MORE than worth your time and money to check out. I have participated in biz camp twice and have learned some invaluable information! I have quadrupled my mailing list, more than doubled my sales and developed a new, dynamic (and effective) online presence after implementing just SOME of the ideas from  Biz camp.  Attending biz camp became a big turning point in my design business.  It was worth every penny invested to attend.
Do you want to be able to increase your readership and sales? You can leave Biz Camp with a personalized action plan that can help you get to the next level in design income. That’s how it worked for me! Click the graphic below to sign up for more information. Jennifer hinted that she might be doing an early bird special for people who get on the mailing list now.

Have a great week and thanks for shopping at CUDigitals.com