There are some things in life that will always serve you well, many pairs of socks and a good solid backup procedure for your data.
Ask yourself the question how many times have you been hit by a hard drive failure or data corruption and not had a backup? What most people say is that they have had catastrophic data loss with no backup of their data usually only once. This normally occurs when you have no decent backup plan in operation.
I mention this as I had a drive failure over the weekend on a portable disk that I shuttle between work and home; lots of important data, and all of it was important data that I couldn’t do without. What was my reaction? Pretty simple really, I restored by data from the backup I had made the night before.
Now this sounds really simple, and the only reason that it was so simple was because I have a pretty solid backup plan that I adhere to strictly. Getting into the routine of backing up your data, is something that you should make a habit of, and there’s plenty of hardware and software around that can help you carry out the task.
Personally I use Dantz Retrospect Professional (link below) coupled with two Maxtor External 250GB Firewire drives for onsite and offsite backups.
Dantz Retrospect Professional
http://www.dantz.com/en/products/personal.dtml
Maxtor External Firewire Drives
http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/external/onetouch/onetouch_combo/index.htm
The beauty of the Maxtor External drive is that it has a ‘one-touch’ button on the front of the drive which ties into the bundled Dantz Restrospect Express software, allowing instantaneous backups across your system. I ended up upgrading to the Professional version of the software as I needed to backup from multiple network drives, but the package as it comes gives great piece of mind for all your essential data.
sgrosvenor
