Delia Dolor, in-house contributor
At the end of every year I attempt to clear my computers of work that I don’t consider junk. Most of it is work over the years that have been important at the time they were sent so I’m reluctant to get rid of them. I never know when I’m going to need them.
Yes, I’ve saved to the cloud, yes, I’ve saved to external drives, two of them actually, as I’ve had more than one experience when one storage unit has just stopped working!
It’s so hard to trust how to save and where to save. Storage media doesn’t last forever, and modern software might not be able to read old files. Social media and trusting our data to the cloud only makes things more complicated. So what do you do? I’ve learned:
Photo courtesy Samsung Memory, Unsplash
- When I backup, I store one at an offsite location – even different countries.
- Archive two copies on different media, just in case one fails or becomes outdated.
- Changes in temperature and humidity reduce media lifespans so as I travel a lot, it’s really important to back up my most important folders regularly.
- Store backups of social media activity with my archived files.
I hope this encourages you to backup, you don’t want to lose everything you did last year!
