Backup Your Files – Before It’s Too Late
Don't waste your money, check out the online backup comparison
Unfortunately I have learned this way too late. But you can learn from my mistakes. Backup your files now!.
File backup is much simpler now than it was back in the day. You needed to burn your photos and important files to CD, then later it was DVD. Or, if you had enough stuff, you could purchase an external hard drive to do the job.
Now all that is still possible. You can never be too safe. But there is another option. You can keep your files at an online storage facility. These things are totally secure. Most have your files backed up on more than one server in the event of server problems. And considering that it costs only a few bucks a month, it is the easiest and cheapest way to fly. Take a look at this online backup comparison to see if one of these suits your needs.
As I mentioned, I have had experience with this. Even now I sit here looking at an external hard drive that has some of my best photos on it… literally thousands of digital photos from about 2 years of my life… unavailable 
What happened is that I was in the process of replacing a computer. I had this hard drive attached to my old computer and on it (as well as on the old computer) are ALL my photos from the first two years of owning a DSLR. Of course, no online backup was available then, or, if it was, it was not common knowledge.
I disconnected the hard drive in order to connect it to the new computer, which I did. What I did not do was make sure the photos were transferred to the new computer. And because I was giving the old computer away, I deleted the information on the hard drive… poof… gone.
A couple of weeks later, I heard this clicking sound from the external hard drive. It was the “click of death,” as I have now found out. I could not access the hard drive.
I called around only to find out that I could pay someone to retrieve my photos – for a price – and the price was not cheap. It seems that you need a totally sterile lab environment to do this, and the companies that do it would not give me a hard estimate. Each one said the same thing: “It could cost anywhere from $500 to $2500 to get your files off the hard drive.” The estimators said that it would more likely be toward the upper end of the estimates. Waah!
So, my advice to you is to get a backup strategy. Whether you continue to keep your files on personal disc or an external hard drive, or online… just do it.
Check out this online backup comparison. It could save you much heartache.
