Back up your data!

Late last week my hard drive died on me and all the contents were completely unrecoverable. In my 15 or so years as a student and employee this has never happened to me. I'm one of the few. Those of you who have already gone through the pain will echo my strong suggestion this week to back up your data. Take the time NOW because you may not have the time later!

When I went to a Mac about three years ago one of the advantages was that the computer came with built in backup software. All I needed was an external hard drive. My employer wasn't willing to provide one so I meant to buy one on my own. They are very affordable so I didn't really begrudge the purchase but it was out of my normal activities. This idea languished for a while and now I am kicking myself for not making the time.

Action items for readers this week:

• Figure out a way to back up your most important data--documents for me are the thing I miss the most. All my annual review paperwork dating back six years, and the paperwork for my employees, will now have to be recreated for the next cycle rather than just updated. Luckily I have hard copies. There are lots of guides online and your systems department can also assist. They would rather restore a hard drive from a backup than listen to us complain about losing data, I can guarantee from my experience.
• Once you figure out how you will do it, ACTUALLY GO THROUGH WITH IT. I had just gotten as a gift a thumb drive with 4 GB of storage two weeks ago, which would have easily held all my documents that I'm currently missing. But I never set it up to back up my data. You can bet it was the first thing I did when I got the refurbished machine back.
• If you are in the position to facilitate backing up your employees' machines, do so. It would have been great if, when I first brought the issue up, my employer sprang for the hard drive. I will now research doing so for my employees and make sure they are backing up their data. I'll try to get some sort of seminar for our faculty here on what we should be doing to preserve our data. I'm certain I'm not the only one not backing up...just the only one who had the worst happen.