Have Backups. Seriously.

2013-04-23

Had a hard drive pretend to die on me. It could have been real. Guys, have backups. Seriously. Do it. Buy an external USB drive if you have a ton of multimedia. If it’s just written data, get a free SkyDrive or Dropbox account or something and have it auto-sync to the cloud. One day your hard drive WILL die, and anything you don’t have a backup of will be gone. Guaranteed. Me, I’m on Windows 7. Go to the Start Menu, type “backup” and click “Backup and Restore” from the list. You can schedule backups to an external drive if you’ve got one. Pick the folders, it takes care of the rest. That’s what I do, automatically every Sunday!

Editor’s note (2026): the advice holds; only the product names aged. Read OneDrive/iCloud/Google Drive for SkyDrive, and Windows Backup or Time Machine for Backup and Restore.