Back Yo Files up Peeps!

You often hear of the horror stories of losing ALL the pictures on your computer.  And before I worked in IT I had no idea how to prevent that.  Most people when uploading their files, save them straight to the computer hard drive.  Either on their "c" drive under my photos or whatever it's named on your computer.  Well what happens is that internal hard drive fails...this could be just a random day or it could take a lightning strike...anything really.  Well anything and everything you have saved is gone :(  My suggestion is to take it into a computer repair business first see if they can recover anything.  Worse case scenario is all is gone :(  We've had customers have their entire "lives" on their computer!!  I just wanna cry with them!

Here is how you can PREVENT that from ever happening....

Get an external hard drive.  Above is the picture of the one I bought HERE. I got this just a few months back and it was $90 then, so price has significantly come down.  This is seriously the easiest thing to use.  It comes with a USB cable and you plug it right into the USB port just like a little thumb drive, but this stores TONS of data!  Now these can fail too, just the same as an internal.....so I would suggest if you're a photographer, to have (2) or more of them and to back up on cds and dvds as well!  There are also many online sites that sell storage. 

My work flow goes something like this:

*upload photos to computer
*create a folder on my desktop (right click, create new)
*copy and paste all files into new folder
*burn new folder to CD or DVD depending on file size
*copy and paste new folder to external hard drive
*start editing

Now I have 4 copies of those files (memory card, computer, CD, and external hard drive). Don't be lazy, if it would kill you to lose these pictures, then BACK THEM UP! Make it part of your routine!