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Always Back Up Your Hard Drive

I had a horrible experience today…my hard drive crashed on my main laptop computer. The worst part of the news is that it’s been a while since I made a backup of it. Oh the agony!

So off it goes for repairs…and hopefully some of the information can be restored. What have I lost? Well, luckily I save all my books, reports, etc. to several computers so most of that information is fine. The most recent sales letters rough drafts were saved to my website to show someone else, so at most I only lost a couple of day’s updates to those letters.

The biggest loss would be to my email files…so hopefully those can be restored.

How’s this a lesson? It’s another simple reminder that Murphy’s Law works constantly in business. Always back up everything regularly. I’m talking to myself as much as everyone else. Backup everything!

Copy your hard drive. Make CDs of anything you’re working hard on (or upload them to your website which puts it in a whole different location in case of a real disaster).

How long has it been since you did your last computer backup? How long has it been since you did your last blog back-up?

One of the first things I did this morning was do a back-up of my blog. It’s real easy to do in WordPress. Go to “Manage” and then “Backup.” Create a back-up to download to your computer. I don’t know how it is done in other software types, but I’m sure it’s not too difficult.

When running big email promotions I have used two merchants accounts and Paypal…so a switch could be made if I went over the limit on one or there were any issues. Guess how I learned that. Yes, that’s right. I had a promotion where there was a merchant account issue and the order form didn’t work for a while. I wonder just how much that cost me…

Written by Terry · Filed Under All 

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13 Responses to “Always Back Up Your Hard Drive”

  1. John Metcalfe on April 9th, 2007 8:52 am

    Terry,

    Thanks for the reminder, i’ve just backed up my own blog just in case murphy comes visiting my house :-)

    You can also set wordpress backups to be emailed to you on an hourly, weekly or monthly basis to…

    John

  2. Ryan Healy on April 9th, 2007 9:54 am

    I recently purchased an external hard drive, and have begun running back-ups.

    By the way, I think Stephen Dean had the same experience just a couple weeks ago and posted about it on his blog.

    I imagine it’s more common for this to happen to Internet marketers since we spend so much time on our computers…

  3. Reminder: back up your hard drive… » Copywriting And Internet Advertising Blog By Stephen Dean - Copywriter on April 9th, 2007 1:28 pm

    [...] Another reminder. Terry Dean just posted about major data loss he recently experienced. [...]

  4. Franck Silvestre on April 10th, 2007 8:27 am

    Good advice Terry, I know this, however I didn’t back up my blog yet, I am going to do this ASAP.

    Happy to see that you didn’t lose you important data.

  5. Terry on April 10th, 2007 9:16 am

    I have to say this…it’s a real pain.

    Still waiting on the computer guy to let me know what all is being salvaged. Not having access to my email folders, I went over to Gmail.com and set up all my pop addresses to pull up through them.

    I actually like them enough that I may keep on using them. It would make it so easy to answer email from different computers.

  6. James D. Brausch on April 10th, 2007 11:12 pm

    Hi Terry,

    Hang in there.

    You might want to look up Deepfreeze on my blog. It is my solution to viruses, spyware, backups, defrags, malware, hackers and everything else. I have no affiliation with them. I just love them because they’ve changed the way I use my computers.

    My Windows-based systems stay minty fresh for the entire couple of years that I own them. A hard drive crash means nothing to my data. It’s not on my hard drive to begin with.

    Remember one of your basic teachings… You aren’t paid by the hour you work… you are paid by the value you produce. That value can’t be realized as long as it is on your hard drive.

    Another teaching we both emphasize is focus. Do one project at a time and get it out there… then move on to the next. That stuff on your hard drive can be viewed as unfinished projects.

    Even family pictures can be put on a DVD, uploaded to Kunaki and then you can purchase your own DVD and send it to close family members. Now they have received a priceless gift… AND you have a backup of your pictures.

    The same is true of EVERYTHING we keep as clutter in our lifes. Give it away to keep it.

    -James D. Brausch

  7. Terry on April 11th, 2007 9:13 am

    Thanks James,

    I will definitely checkout Deepfreeze as a possibility.

    As mentioned, the majority of my stuff is either “out there” so it is saved somewhere or almost all sales copy is on a site (even if I don’t show it yet). It’s just been a pain all the way around…

    As an update, after having it worked on, it’s been determined it is a hardware malfunction and the hard drive is being replaced under warranty (the computer is only 3 months old).

  8. Angela Chen Shui on April 15th, 2007 8:08 am

    Gmail is all I use.. easy to set up site email accounts to respond from once email gets forwarded…. Enjoyyyy! ;-)

  9. Angela Chen Shui on April 15th, 2007 8:18 am

    sorry… above was in regard to Terry’s:
    “Not having access to my email folders, I went over to Gmail.com and set up all my pop addresses to pull up through them.

    I actually like them enough that I may keep on using them. It would make it so easy to answer email from different computers. “…

    Also, thanks for reminder to back up blog, Terry…

    “Remember one of your basic teachings… You aren’t paid by the hour you work… you are paid by the value you produce. That value can’t be realized as long as it is on your hard drive.

    Another teaching we both emphasize is focus. Do one project at a time and get it out there… then move on to the next. That stuff on your hard drive can be viewed as unfinished projects.”

    James, that felt like you were speaking directly to me… Thanks.

  10. Why My Hard Drive “Disaster” Was Good News–Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean on April 16th, 2007 8:42 am

    [...] April 16, 2007Why My Hard Drive “Disaster” Was Good News Last week I told you about my hard drive crash in “Always Back Up Your Hard Drive.” [...]

  11. Danny Sheehan on April 17th, 2007 5:39 am

    I just purchased myself a copy of Acronis True Image 10 Home, it is a lot like Norton Ghost only a lot cheaper. I am amazed that people think that backing up is just a matter of copying email files and documents to another drive. You need to backup your entire drive and be able to restore your entire drive quickly. In internet marketing time is money. To re-install from scratch you have to spend 3 or 4 days re-installing applications (not to mention time wasted finding serial keys). With a true image copy of your had disk you can be up and running in minutes. I am a great believer in “failing faster” – After I had a similar disaster when I dropped my laptop I vowed never to let it happen again. I learned quickly from that disaster.

  12. Craig on May 9th, 2007 6:59 pm

    Hi Terry,

    I pay $5 a month and my hard drive is automatically backed up – check it out http://www.carbonite.com/.

    Carbonite is NOT a resource hog – As you make any changes to your hard drive carbonite will update the change automatically.

    Craig

  13. Tracey "Word Doctor" Dooley on July 31st, 2007 6:31 am

    Boy, I feel for you. This happened to me a few years ago, when I was working on a really important, big client project. Only it was the PC’s main HDD fault. I hadn’t backed up for months, and I spent many more months trying to put the bits and pieces back together, recovering anything I could. It was a long, slow and painful process.

    Since then I have been working with an iMac (second hand, but no problems to date, touch wood!) and an external HDD. I did start out religiously backing up, but then laxed. Now, I have been reminded of the importance of backing up, and have just backed up about 10% of my files (the most important stuff).

    So thank you!

    And I hope you never have the curse of the failing HDD ever again. (BTW, I’ve heard that USB flash memories are a better alternative. Haven’t looked into this myself, but hope to one day soon.)

    BTW, Danny Sheehan says:

    “I just purchased myself a copy of Acronis True Image 10 Home, it is a lot like Norton Ghost only a lot cheaper. I am amazed that people think that backing up is just a matter of copying email files and documents to another drive. You need to backup your entire drive and be able to restore your entire drive quickly. In internet marketing time is money.”

    Is this a program that copies the entire HDD infrastructure onto an external HDD at the click of a mouse? Is it ‘dummies’ easy?

    Cheers!

    Tracey

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