I went to see a new client yesterday. He’s a university lecturer and he’s currently on sabbatical leave whilst writing a book. He’s recently purchased a new laptop – a small one that is light enough to carry around with him so he can work from home or take the computer with him if he’s out and about doing his research.
He’d done a pretty good job of setting up the new laptop, but had got confused about transferring his photos and music and transferring the emails and address book from his old computer, running Windows XP to his new laptop running Windows 7.
Somewhere along the line we also started creating the restore discs. If you purchase a new laptop ALWAYS create the restore discs. The days when computers came with a set of CDs with all the drivers on are long gone. You have to create the restore discs yourself. This usually takes 2 or 4 DVDs. I keep a stack of DVDs in the boot of my car. I see many new computers whose owners just keep clicking on “remind me later” when the reminder to create the restore discs pops up.
Don’t put it of – do it! Hopefully you will never need those DVDs, but better safe than sorry.
While the first DVD was being written he asked me about creating backups of his book. The entire content of his book to date was on a memory stick. That was all – just on a memory stick. It wasn’t on his PC, it wasn’t on his laptop and it wasn’t on the university computer.
He already knew that having documents just on the memory stick wasn’t a backup. He also realised, without me telling him, that if his laptop is stolen or lost along with the memory stick then the book has gone. He asked me what solution I recommended. The university technicians had already told him that he should use “the cloud” for his emails, so when I explained to him about using Mozy as an online backup service he didn’t need any persuading.
The benefits were immediately obvious to him. His data is safely stored offsite and will still be there if his laptop and memory stick are lost, stolen, or destroyed. I told him to carry on using the memory stick as well and to store the content of the book on his laptop – you can’t have too many backups – you can have too few. The added benefit is that if he needs to edit the contents or show the book to someone when he is out and about without his laptop, he can log-in to his online storage area from another computer and access the documents.
I left him to sign up for the trial version. Why don’t you do the same? Sign up for the best online backup today – and sleep peacefully tonight.