Over the past three years of owning CUDigitals, I have heard some pretty sad and dramatic stories about catastrophic data loss. The usual scenario is this: the customer had only ONE copy of their entire digi stash (personal use and commercial use) and the hard drive failed - on their computer or on an external hard drive.
Can you imagine the hassle of going back through all your PayPal receipts and contacting store owners to ask for download resets on everything you've purchased? In some cases, this involves the unpleasant realization that some of the ordered items are discontinued or the store is gone ... and so is your chance to download again.
I have been in this situation myself and the horrible feeling in my stomach last for several days. I SHOULD have had a backup copy on my External Hard Drive when my computer hard drive failed but I discovered too late that I had neglected to change the sync password for the EHD when I changed my login password for my computer so it had not been doing its nightly backup as I had thought. My collateral damage was three months of photographs including three of our daughter's birthdays and some other events. I was able to recover some of my downloads from stores but not all.
After that painful lesson, I set up automatic online backup in addition to reconfiguring my external hard drive backup software. The price of annual online backup is quite minimal and I believe it is 100% worth it for peace of mind and reduction of hassles later when your computer fails. I don't even say IF your computer fails anymore. That big data loss I experienced involved a new laptop - not even 4 months old. The drive just FAILED. Data recovery from a failed HD starts in the $200-300 range just to diagnose whether anything can be salvaged and goes up from there to get anything off the drive! Online backup is just good insurance!
I have been using BackBlaze for several years now. I chose it because it will backup attached external drives. For me, that means I can backup my entire 1TB laptop drive AND an additional 1TB and 500gB drive that I have attached to it. I regularly purge my files of duplicates and old stuff that I now longer need so I have less data than a lot of people but I still have room for 2 copies of something and sometimes three if the files are really important.
I know there are other backup services out there but I recommend BackBlaze because I have experience with it. In addition to backing up external drives, they also give you options for recovery such as having everything delivered to you on an external drive or flash drive. I have needed to recover smaller batches of files a few times and the process was extremely simple. They also have a pretty cool feature to help you locate your computer if it were to be stolen!
You can get a month of backup free and you can also earn extra months of service by telling your friends about it. Check it all out HERE.
Disclosure: I receive an additional month of free backup service when people who visit the link above sign up. I was not paid for this post in any other way and I have an active, paid BackBlaze account. Opinions in this post are my own.)
top image credit: freedigitalphotos.net
Did you find this useful? Subscribe to the CUDigitals weekly newsletter and never miss another tip, new release, store event or freebie!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.