Of all the maintenance tasks I do, backing up my computer and phone are my least favorite. I don't know why I dread it so much, but I do. However, I also know, from personal experience, how important this task is. When something happens to you or someone you know, it makes you more cautious. A cousin of mine got in a bad accident when turning left at an intersection so I am more cautious when crossing and turning at intersections. My family lost all of the files on our laptop when it died without warning. It was not as bad as it could have been but it hurt. That's why, despite my dislike of the chore, I backup my devices every other month.
Think about what you keep on your computer and your phone. Maybe your phone* is backed up to the cloud, but your computer probably isn't. You have passwords, financial information, photos, videos, and all manner of things that you want to keep or you wouldn't have them on your hard drive. Imagine that all being gone. You can never get it back. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? I don't want that to happen to you and there are only a few steps to get started. 1. Buy a backup hard drive. I actually recommend getting two - one for you and one that you keep somewhere else besides your house. Maybe this is a family member's house or a safe deposit box, but it needs to be fairly accessible because you'll be backing up to both each time. Hard drives are pretty small, have a very large storage capacity, and are fairly inexpensive all things considered. Another benefit to having two is that hard drives are not fool-proof. If one happened to fail, you'd have the other one. 2. Do your first backup. Put everything you want to be safe on both drives. (If you have stuff you think you don't want on there, this might be a good time to see if you even still need it on your computer). Store your drive in a place where you'll know where it is and then take the other one to its safe home. 3. Decide on a backup schedule. If you are constantly adding things to your computer that it's important to make sure you have backed up, then you may want to do a backup every month. If you don't save too much, then you can let more time go between backups. That's it! Like I said, I don't know why I dread it so much because it's really not that hard. I can take some time, particularly if you have a lot of photos or videos, but once you start it, it can run in the background while you get other things done. Here's to safe files and saved photos!! *A note about phones: if you don't have your phone synced to a cloud system, I recommend backing that up to your computer first and then backing the computer up. That way you don't forget and things are in an orderly fashion. This is my personal preference but it seems to work well.
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Hi! I'm Sarah!
I am a natural light portrait photographer. I've been taking photos since 2014 and would eat a smoothie from Tropical Smoothie Cafe for lunch everyday if I could. Thank you so much for stopping by. I blog about sessions, things I'm learning, stuff in my life, and information for YOU, my client. If you like what you see around the site, I'd love to work with you! I'd also love to connect with you on Instagram. I'm @sarah_jayne_photo :) Archives
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