Has this ever happened to you?

Let's face it, everyone loses their data at some point in their digital life. Whether its by theft, virus, accidental deletion, hardware failure or your little brothers squirt gun. I believe this is common knowledge and the solution is one or more of a number of backup options.

Fact: ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL.

10 years of experience tells me that this is 100% true! Most of the requests I receive are from clients needing assistance in recovering lost files/data and they just want to not have that happen again because it really freaked them out. So, I give my "Why you need to Backup your Data' sermon? People re-commit themselves to doing the same things they stopped doing the last time they re-commited themselves. And by re-swearing to: Getting out the DVD's, emailing yourself, sticking a reminder post-it-note on the coffee cup, buying a new flashdrive and hanging it from the car mirror, creating another outlook reminder, emailing yourself, emailing your friends, etc etc. (did i mention emailing yourself?) It's great to use any backup method as anything is better than nothing at all. In reality, manual backups are easily deferred by other more pressing tasks and at times there are a plethora of important tasks just waiting!

What do I do now? I no longer email nor write threatening notes to myself. My info backs up automatically every night at 7pm to a server somewhere on the internet. (I can't tell you where because, well...lets just not go there) I never have to worry about it. No more recommiting, no more waking at 3am wondering if I did back up, no more retracing my steps looking for my M.I.A. flashdrive. In my opinion, automated disk to disk backup (local or remote) is the best thing that ever happened to data integrity. (insert smilie face here).

"Take rest. A field that has rested gives a beautiful crop."

Ovid