An Easy and Free Way To Back Up Your Computer Files
I have had three friends in the past two months contact me frantically because their computers crashed. It wasn't just the lost hard drive that had them frantic - it was the "lost" documents or photos. None of them had full backups of their files. I'm pretty tech-savvy but I'm no expert. Luckily, I was able to retrieve all the files from one hard drive. I retrieved some files that weren't corrupted from another. Unfortunately, I could do nothing at all with the third hard drive.All was lost.
As tech people say, it's not a question of IF your hard drive will crash, it's just a question of WHEN it will crash. Of course, I highly recommend that you use some kind of regular backup. You can buy a backup drive or use flashdrives - but they can crash too and, more critically, you have to remember to actually do the backups.
So, the preferred method these days is to store your work "in the cloud" - online on a computer server that will do regular backing up for you.
There are several well known services like this but I am recommending Dropbox because they offer a FREE 2 Gigabyte account (that's a lot of documents!) of basic backup protection.
You sign up, install a small program on your computer and it creates a folder (your DRopbox) on your computer to put files in. You use the folder just like any other folder - but it will be automatically backed up online.
If you have other computers, you can add Dropbox there too and then those files will appear on both computers. No more emailing files back and forth or carrying them on a flashdrive. And you can access your files by signing in at Dropbox.com from any computer.
You can also share folders in your Dropbox with other Dropbox users. That would be great for collaborative projects. If I make changes to a file in our shared folder, you would see the changes the next time you open it.
The 2GB storage is free and you can add additional storage space both by paying for it (50GB costs $99 a year) and for every friend who joins and installs Dropbox, they will give you both 250 MB of bonus space (up to a limit of 8 GB).
Okay, I pointed you to a solution. Don't contact me when your computer crashes and you lose those files!
As tech people say, it's not a question of IF your hard drive will crash, it's just a question of WHEN it will crash. Of course, I highly recommend that you use some kind of regular backup. You can buy a backup drive or use flashdrives - but they can crash too and, more critically, you have to remember to actually do the backups.
So, the preferred method these days is to store your work "in the cloud" - online on a computer server that will do regular backing up for you.
There are several well known services like this but I am recommending Dropbox because they offer a FREE 2 Gigabyte account (that's a lot of documents!) of basic backup protection.
You sign up, install a small program on your computer and it creates a folder (your DRopbox) on your computer to put files in. You use the folder just like any other folder - but it will be automatically backed up online.
If you have other computers, you can add Dropbox there too and then those files will appear on both computers. No more emailing files back and forth or carrying them on a flashdrive. And you can access your files by signing in at Dropbox.com from any computer.
You can also share folders in your Dropbox with other Dropbox users. That would be great for collaborative projects. If I make changes to a file in our shared folder, you would see the changes the next time you open it.
The 2GB storage is free and you can add additional storage space both by paying for it (50GB costs $99 a year) and for every friend who joins and installs Dropbox, they will give you both 250 MB of bonus space (up to a limit of 8 GB).
Okay, I pointed you to a solution. Don't contact me when your computer crashes and you lose those files!
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