Calling For Backup
This past June a designer I know, Rae Creedle, lost her home to fire. Worse than that, she lost the all the parts of her knitting business that were ON the now-melted computer.
It was a devastating loss, but Rae was kind enough to use it as an opportunity to teach all of us about the importance of backup. Oddly enough, and not like me at all, I heeded her message and signed up for Mozy as a computer backup.
I also store old files from past projects on a hard drive, files that I may never need to refer to again, but I need to keep them for legal reasons. If you've ever emailed me with a question about an old design or an old book, this may be why it takes me some time to find an answer...
Since I don't keep these files on my computer, they wouldn't be backed up in case something should happen to our hard drive. I keep them on one of my servers (anniemodesitt.com, flipknit.com, modeknit.com, knitwithcourage.com, etc.) because I have a LOT of room that I don't use for my websites.
Imagine how thrilled I was to remember this happy backup routine when my computer went dead yesterday. In the midsts of my angst, it was a bright spot. That, and my new cheap-o refurb ipod-touch which allows me to continue to get email and check websites when my computer is out of commission...
I had noticed for some time that the battery seemed to be doing odd things like not working. The computer needed to be plugged in to work, if the cord came out the computer would just "click" off. SO annoying.
But I'd done nothing about it (well, nothing except the backup thing...) Last night the cord fell out again, but this time there was no lovely "chime" when I tried to turn it on. Just 3 long, forlorn beeps. I joked on Twitter last night that I asked the resident Jew to perform a "Lazarus" on my poor laptop...
And my dear, dear Gerry, our resident tech-head, was able to get the computer running again this morning. Yay, Gerry! Apparently there's a well known problem with some of their batteries, one of which is in my own Mac. So a new one is on its way, and with any luck it will be here by the time I leave for TNNA!
BTW, in case any of you were wondering? I'm Times New Roman.
It was a devastating loss, but Rae was kind enough to use it as an opportunity to teach all of us about the importance of backup. Oddly enough, and not like me at all, I heeded her message and signed up for Mozy as a computer backup.
I also store old files from past projects on a hard drive, files that I may never need to refer to again, but I need to keep them for legal reasons. If you've ever emailed me with a question about an old design or an old book, this may be why it takes me some time to find an answer...
Since I don't keep these files on my computer, they wouldn't be backed up in case something should happen to our hard drive. I keep them on one of my servers (anniemodesitt.com, flipknit.com, modeknit.com, knitwithcourage.com, etc.) because I have a LOT of room that I don't use for my websites.
Imagine how thrilled I was to remember this happy backup routine when my computer went dead yesterday. In the midsts of my angst, it was a bright spot. That, and my new cheap-o refurb ipod-touch which allows me to continue to get email and check websites when my computer is out of commission...
I had noticed for some time that the battery seemed to be doing odd things like not working. The computer needed to be plugged in to work, if the cord came out the computer would just "click" off. SO annoying.
But I'd done nothing about it (well, nothing except the backup thing...) Last night the cord fell out again, but this time there was no lovely "chime" when I tried to turn it on. Just 3 long, forlorn beeps. I joked on Twitter last night that I asked the resident Jew to perform a "Lazarus" on my poor laptop...
And my dear, dear Gerry, our resident tech-head, was able to get the computer running again this morning. Yay, Gerry! Apparently there's a well known problem with some of their batteries, one of which is in my own Mac. So a new one is on its way, and with any luck it will be here by the time I leave for TNNA!
BTW, in case any of you were wondering? I'm Times New Roman.
Feed me, baby!
8 Comments:
You can never have too many backups :-)
PS I'm Helvetica ;-)
Annie,
Check out Goodreads.com. When I went to post that I was reading
"Knit with Courage, Live with Hope" it came up with the wrong author - someone named Lissy Friedman. You might want to check into this. Deb K
I too learned the hard way about the misfortune of NOT backing-up your hard drive. I was in the middle of preparing a large organization's annual directory. Since it had never been put into a PC (don't ask), I had to input all the information before producing the directory. Just as I was finishing the final layout in PAGEMAKER my laptop (that had also been doing the funny battery shut-down behavior like yours) just DIED. I had to pay hundreds of dollars to have a computer company do a rush recovery of my laptop and then a new motherboard was installed. I now own an external hard-drive that I regularly use to back-up all of our home computers. Periodically I will burn a DVD with the information and put it in our safety deposit box in case of a fire.
I too am Helvetica.....which is ironic since I only use a sans-serif font for my personal typing.
Diane
I'm Times New Roman too.
Try smugmug.com for backups. I used them for all of my photos and am very pleased. It's unlimited storage for photos for 30 bucks a year. But they now offer a service called smugvault, where you can backup whatever. It's offsite, but accessible by the internet, and it's THEIR problem to back it up and keep it available - not yours. But you do have to remember to back up your stuff to their site.
Yup, a hard drive crashed of mine, and in a way luckily (it was going to cost $2400 to get data off it if they could) the recovery people said no go. A really fatal error. Sigh.
Pardon the mashed grammar up there. I just watched my tivo'd 'Helvetica' an hour ago and before reading this. It turns out... I'm Helvetica. hehe. It does make sense to me!
This is a good reminder for me that I need to get moving on backup. I am so bad at doing it, but the more I use my computer for my yarn business, the more I'm reminded of how important it is. Thanks, and I'm glad all things worked out for you.
I love mozy! I pay a monthly fee - very cheap and well worth it, to back up all my digital photos and documents. Since almost all of the pics i have of my second child are digital, I decided that I would gladly pay to not lose those memories! Glad you got your pc up and running.
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