How I backup my files

Have you ever had a hard disk crash, causing you to lose all your files?



If your answer is "no", consider yourself extremely lucky but your luck will run out eventually.


Today, nobody should ever lose their files because of all the backup software and cheap hard drives that are available.


I have a one terabyte HD as my main or "C" drive. I also have an identical drive in my computer that I use for backup.


Norton 360 is my main backup software, but it does a lot more than just backup my files. It also keeps my computer free from viruses, optimizes my hard drives, protects my privacy and tunes up the computer to keep it blazing fast.


I also use Acronis True Image Home 2010 as my secondary backup software because appart from doing routine backup, it does something really slick.


It clones my main hard drive to yet another one terabyte unit. This HD is an external, USB unit.


I clone my C drive about every other week simply because weird stuff happens and I feel better by having files I can access just like the ones on my C drive.
I can also connect this drive to any computer, boot from it and instantly have all my files up and running. No disk shuffling, and no lost data.


Acronis and Norton do their backup thing automatically, with no effort on my part. The cloning operation is manual and time consuming.
Cloning 400 gigabytes takes a couple of hours because it does a true, bit-by-bit copy.


After a major shooting session such as a babe shoot or after one of my trips or whatever event that causes me to take hundreds of pictures, I copy the files from camera to DVD. I use 4 gig or 8 gig memory cards because they make the process simple. A 4-gig card will neatly fill one DVD. For an 8-gig card I simply divide by two.
I do this before I start working on the files.
After I have photo shopped all of the files, I make another DVD of the finished images and also upload them to my SmugMug account.


With this multi-level backup strategy I feel fairly safe and secure concerning my computer files.


If you are not now using a virus checker such as Norton 360 then rest assured you have critters running around on your HD and they are probably sending out interesting personal data items to nasties living in Nigeria or Indonesia or hell, maybe even Detroit Michigan. You are not only leaving yourself wide open to identity theft but you are also part of the problem by infecting other computers.
Don't be promiscuous! Use protection.

Let me know if you have a better system to protect your computer files, I am always looking for better and safer ways to store and protect my data.

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