George Bernard Shaw said, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

Ideas are meant to be shared.  When we have ideas about things — ways to make life better, ways to have fun, ways to express creativity, ways to relax — it is too hard to keep them to ourselves.  When we have learned something important or something that works or a solution to a problem that many have, we just want to share it. We want others to have the information too.  Why keep something so good to ourselves?

Here at THE DAILY DIGI we will be bringing you some bright ideas.  Whether it be teaching you how to organize digital photos, how to get out of scrapping rut, or how to plan out an anniversary album, we will be here to share the wonderful ideas of the digi scrapping community with you. But remember,

“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”  — Buddha

So don’t just read about the ideas — make them part of your life!

______

Today’s bright idea is about backing up…I know…we have all heard the stories about OTHER people losing data, right?  Or maybe you, like me (Steph), have had the misfortune of having hardrives fail.  Let me share with you my story and then, the Bright Idea…

I (Steph) have never been very good at backing up to CD’s and DVD. I tried, but it just became too much, so I came up with a pretty good system for backing up my files that worked for me. I had two little portable external hardrives (EHDs), one for photos and one for digi supplies that I used on my laptop. I backed them up to a larger non-portable EHD that was attached to my desktop. Whenever I downloaded photos from my camera, I downloaded them directly to the larger EHD and then copied them to my portable EHD for use on my laptop. Suddenly, without warning, my little EHD with my digi supplies died. I hadn’t been as good about backing it up, so I did lose some supplies, but I was able to get most of my links reset. I bought a new EHD and kept the same system for transferring photos from my camera, but again wasn’t very good about backing up my new EHD. During February 2008, I got caught up on all of my printing and just a couple of days later, that new EHD died. Because of my system for transferring photos, I did not lose any photos, but did lose some layouts (I had just printed them, but have lost the digital files), and again some supplies. I decided that enough was enough and I signed up for Mozy’s online backup. It took less than 10 minutes to set up my account and get the backup started and then, about a month to get all 160 gigs of photos, layouts, and supplies backed up, but I did get them securely backed up onto Mozy’s servers.  After that, the system automatically backed up when I scheduled it to.

Fast forward to last month when I lost yet another EHD. We were on vacation and I only lost one days worth of photos that were not yet backed up to Mozy. When I got my new little EHD (a different brand from all of the others this time), I just right-clicked on the Mozy icon on my desktop and selected restore. Within 3 days, I had all of my photos, layouts, and digi supplies back and on my new EHD!! I could have cried with joy!

The peace of mind that I now have by knowing everything is backed up on an extra EHD and also backed up online has been huge! I no longer worry about what will happen if I lose things, because I know the chances are much lower than they were before. It’s not an IF but WHEN will your computer/hardrive die?

Bright Idea…

Which online backup solution is for you? I have linked below to a couple of articles that might help, but it seems that most digital scrappers use Mozy or Carbonite. Both are very affordable, right around $50/year with unlimited space. The biggest difference is that Mozy will backup your EHD’s as long as they are attached to your computer during a backup. Carbonite does not recognize EHD’s but the backup is more real-time where Mozy backs up once a day at a scheduled time (that you select).

Here is an article on how to choose an online backup service

Here are some reviews of online backup services

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.