My apologies for being two days late with this reminder. The Ur-Guru, his laptop, digital camera, and GPS-equipped PDA have descended on me and disrupted my schedule considerably.
I asked him about his own backup plans for this next 6 weeks, though I realized they might not be applicable to most ordinary human beings. He told me that his mail/web/ftp server is set to back up every night automatically, and that he copies any work that he does here, or photos that he takes, to the server for storage and safekeeping, in case anything happens to the laptop. The mail is already on the server, so he doesn’t have to worry about it.
Most private individuals and sole proprietors won’t find themselves running a server, but almost all of us do have web sites to which we could upload pictures and other files while traveling, in order to have backups that weren’t vulnerable to the hazards of the road.
You can store any kind of a file on your web server–but you may not want to put all of them in your public HTML directory with your web pages, because then anyone can find and copy them. If you think this might be a solution for you, check with your ISP or web hosting company for more specific instructions on how to put files up on your site. Earthlink, for instance, provides subscribers with an FTP (that stands for File Transfer Protocol) client (that means software program); so does Comcast.
If your ISP doesn’t provide an FTP client, you can easily download a free version from TheFreeSite.com or by doing a Google search on “free ftp client” plus the name of your operating system.
And remember—the best backup routine, like the best exercise routine, is the one you can keep doing regularly.
Please send me any backup questions or tips you think of—or any questions for the Ur-Guru. And if you no longer wish to receive these reminders, just let me know.
Until next week,
Sallie
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