This week we have a guest column from my colleague Ted Prodromou of Net Biz Experts. Ted and I are both members of the Executive Team for the Bay Area Consultants Network. For those who are interested, he’s leading a series of free webinars about Web 2.0, and on February 8th, I’ll be presenting about podcasting.
I thought my non-geek readers would appreciate a story that demonstrates that even IT experts suffer from computer disasters.
I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, BACKUP YOUR DATA! I’ve heard it a million times and I’ve been telling my clients to back up their data for almost 30 years (am I really that old?) My friend Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with “sketch”) is a backup evangelist. She is the queen of backups and constantly reminds everyone she meets to back up your data at least once a week.
Of course I backup my data occasionally. I have backup programs installed on my computer but I don’t run them regularly because they take too long to run. I have tons of data on 3 computers and most of it isn’t backed up regularly even though I know better.
I was running out of disk space on 2 of my computers so I ventured down to Best Buy to check out the fancy new external USB hard drives. For almost nothing I could add more disk space than I can even fill up. I ended up purchasing 2 new hard drives, one portable 320 GB drive for my laptop and a 1 TB (yes that’s terabyte) drive so I could back up all 3 computers to one drive.
I ended up purchasing the Western Digital Passport portable drive that constantly syncs my data as it’s created. I also purchased the Western Digital MyBook terabyte hard drive so I could back up data from all 3 computers to a central location.
I ran home and plugged in my new Western Digital Passport and instantly it appeared on My Computer. No installation hassles. Nothing to configure. Presto I had more disk space instantly. I installed the Memeo backup software that comes installed on the drive and I was syncing my data with the Western Digital Passport in less than 5 minutes.
Next I installed the Western Digital MyBook on my other computer and instantly I had an entire terabyte of disk space to play with. I configured a backup with the Memeo software and I was backing up 3 computers to my Western Digital MyBook in no time. In less than one hour I had all 3 computers backing up to my Western Digital MyBook and my primary computer syncing data to my Western Digital Passport. Unbelievable!
And as fate would have it, today I turned on my computer and Outlook wouldn’t open. The PST database file was corrupt and the repair program could only salvage part of my data. I would have lost most of my email archive, my contact database and my calendar. Well I simply found the backup file on my Western Digital MyBook and I was back in business!
Thank you Sallie and thank you Western Digital. You are lifesavers!!
Reposted from Ted’s Blog.
Loading ...
Leave a Reply