Not if, but when …

I wrote in last weeks column that my focus for 2013 would be using your computing devices to make life easier — and life isn't easier when you are worried about the safety of information on your computer hard drive. Hard drives fail. There is an adage that it is not "if" a hard drive fails, but "when." Add to that all the information you keep on smartphones and tablets, and we all have a large amount of data to worry about. 

If you have been reading my columns over the past several years, you will know that I am an avid photographer. I take many pictures, and I use my computer for enhancing and editing my work. Often, I will have multiple copies of an edited photo, and many of my images are used in various commercial endeavors. During the summer I began the monumental task of totally reorganizing my digital photo library. Without going into the gory details, the drive I transferred my files to went bad before I could back up the files, and I lost a large volume of work. 

The drive was under warranty, and it was replaced without a problem. I also have backups of some my photo work scattered across my many USB drives, and I keep backup copies almost all of my unedited images. Needless to say, I have a big job of recovery and re-editing to do this winter, as well as making sure that I have one or more backup copies of all my important files. 

I am a strong proponent of making frequent backups, and I practice what I preach, but even when you backup religiously, things can go wrong. If you have a large amount image files, as I do, one backup location is not enough. I have images scattered across many different drives, and each of those drive needs to be backed up. What follows are some practices you might want to consider to avoid having a similar disaster. Next week's column will cover more specifics on backing up your important data. 

1. Perform backups of your computer hard drive on a regular basis — daily, or at least weekly, depending on how often you make changes to important files.
2. If you keep your financial records on your computer, using Quicken or a similar financial record keeping program, consider backing up just those files to a USB flash drive every time you make changes.
3. One backup copy of your hard drive, or important files is never enough. If you back up your internal drive to an external drive, consider subscribing to a cloud (online) backup service as well.
4. Keep backups of important information in more than location (see number 3, above). If you keep all your backups in your house, and there is a disaster of some kind, you lose everything. 
5. Backup tablets and smart phone regularly, either to your computer, the cloud, or both. 

If you are looking for additional information before next week's column, do a Google search of COMPUTER BACKUP. Anything from CNET is a good place to start.