Backing Up is Hard to Do

Last week, I sat down at my desk and glanced at my little HP server. All four drive lights were out, and the warning light was flashing, alternating red and blue pulses. I scurried for the manual, desperate to find the error code key. I stared at the black box and counted red, blue, blue, blue... NNNOOOOOOOO!!!

Yep. It's dead as a door nail.

Thankfully, I have a backup. I had learned the hard way a few years ago, when one of my drives kicked the proverbial bucket. The amount of data loss was minimal, but very memorable. That's why I have multiple backups of my images on a redundant server, an external hard drive, a Drobo and in "the Cloud."

Believe it or not, less than 45% of computer users backup their data. All those precious digital images, stored as "ones" and "zeros" in a disc platter that could fail. Images that might not be recoverable.

Tomorrow is World Backup Day (http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=9&language=1), and if you haven't performed a backup in a long time, or have never made a backup of your computer, tomorrow's the day to do it.

One of the hottest new products is Western Digital's My Book Live Duo (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=620). With it's redundant RAID mirroring drives, losing images is virtually a thing of the past.

So tomorrow, play it safe. Create a digital shoebox and backup your images.