Do you have to lose everything before you make backups?

Another friend's laptop failed this week. Dead. Gone. Maybe she'll get her data back. Maybe she won't.

Have I mentioned that data recovery usually costs $1000-$2000 or more? And that's only if it works, which it often doesn't.

Lucky for her I'd badgered her into getting a free Dropbox. But in a spectacularly stupid backup failure, she did not put her documents into the Dropbox. She was literally one drag and drop away from being protected three days before her computer just up and died without warning.

Why didn't she put her documents into the Dropbox? "I was gonna do it on the weekend."

Then she said to me, "I was afraid to tell you I hadn't made backups because I knew you'd be mad at me."

No. No. No. No. NO! NO! NO! NO!

The reason to make backups is not to avoid my ire. The reason to make backups is because your don't want to lose all your stuff.

I find it utterly pathetic that I care more about the data on my friends', family's and clients' computers than you all seem to.

It all boils down to this ... are you one of those people who has to lose absolutely everything before you learn your lesson and start making backups? If so, please continue to ignore me. If you would like to be spared that pain, get a Dropbox.

I Just Deleted All Your Files!

Stop and think about it for a minute. How would you feel if you lost all your files ... your photos ... your thesis ... that script you've slaved over for years ... your novel.

If you I'm gonna let you pass on this Dropbox thing you've got another thing coming. I really mean it. I am shoving this down the throat and up the ass of everyone I know.

You, yes YOU need a Dropbox. For 15 years I have been designing backup systems and they've always been cumbersome and high maintenance, until this service. Dropbox finally got it right.

You have no excuse. It's free. It's effortless. EFFORTLESS, do you hear me? It's encrypted. It's secure. You set it up, you put your stuff in it, and you never, ever have to think about backups again.

Not only does it backup your stuff automatically and for free, but there are all sorts of neat tricks you can do with your Dropbox.

Here are 15 Advanced Dropbox Tricks.

One of the niftiest tricks is Dropbox for iPhone. You can access all your files from your phone. Not only can you view them, you can email them. So if someone asks for a file, tap it on your iPhone and send it to them. It's just that easy.

Even if you don't have an iPhone, you can still get to your Dropbox files anytime (at work, for example) by logging into the Dropbox web site.

Dropbox saved my ass three times the very first week I installed it. Get your Dropbox now.

Free, Automatic, Effortless, Internet Backups ... Now You Have No Excuse

You know how I'm always bitching at you to make backups?

Just this week another friend lost another research paper she'd worked on for hundreds of hours. She screamed and railed against the support reps from the manufacturer of her laptop.

No, sweetheart. No. You're lovely, but no. It's not their fault. It's yours.

I don't know what else I have to do to get this through to all of you. You, yes, you, the person reading this right now, you, YOUR HARD DRIVE IS 100% GUARANTEED TO FAIL. It is an absolute certainty. Not maybe. It will. The only question is when.

Hard drives are like the tires on your car. Sometimes they wear out slowly. And sometimes they fail in the most spectacular ways possible.

There is now a free service I am recommending to all my friends, Dropbox. Get it now. No really. Now. RIGHT FREAKING NOW. Not tomorrow. Not when you get around to it. Not when you're done with your project. STOP READING THIS RIGHT NOW AND GET A DROPBOX ACCOUNT. I'm telling you. I'm ordering you. I'm begging you.

OK. Do you have it yet?

Good.

Here's how you use it.

Install it on every computer you own and also your iPhone.

It puts a folder on your computer called "Dropbox". This folder is magic. It automatically syncs between all your systems. Any document you put in your Dropbox will also appear in all your other Dropboxes. From now on, instead of keeping your documents in your "Documents" or your "My Documents" folder, you'll keep them in your Dropbox. Your Dropbox will become your new Documents folder.

AND!

Everything you put in your Dropbox is magically, automatically backup up to the Internet. Dropbox even let's you retrieve older copies of documents you've lost.

Even if you make backups at home (and you should) if your whole house burns down you'll lose your laptop and your backups with it. Dropbox protects you against this.

I have not believed this strongly in a service in quite sometime. Everyone should use it. EVERYONE.

Did you read all of this and not go get a Dropbox account? Then you're an idiot.

Really, please. Do it.

Disaster or Minor Hassle ... Choose

Being a computer consultant is like being a dentist. He tells you to brush and floss and take care of your teeth, and then makes a fortune when you don't listen.

As a computer consultant I advise clients and friends to make backups, and then I make a bundle of money when their hard drives fail and they didn't listen.

So here some free advice that, unlike most free advice, is worth something.

You! Yes, You! The person reading this right now. Your hard drive, the very hard drive on the very computer you are using to read this right now ... is absolutely, positively, 100% going to fail and crash and die, dead, dead, dead.

I amazes me how many people can't wrap their brains around this simple concept.

"Oh my God! Why did it fail? How did it fail? It can't have failed, it was working this morning. Well no one ever told me it was going to fail! If I knew it was going to fail, I would have made backups."

So I'm telling you ... right here, right now ... it's going to fail. Failure is absolutely guaranteed. When you bought it, it came with a promise from the maker, "this will work for a while, and then it will fail." The only question is when.

Hard drives are like the tires on a car. They wear out. You expect them to wear out. Their manufacturers publish specification on when they expect them to wear out. So knowing that it is certain they will wear out, you should have a plan. With tires, you carry a spare. With hard drives, you should make backups.

You have no excuse. Most computers these days have CD burners. So make a backup. Hell! At 30 cents each for blank CD-R media, make 5 backups.

Don't buy cheap, generic CD-R media unless you want to pull it off the shelf in 18 months and find out it doesn't work. Buy a name brand. It doesn't matter which one, Sony, Imation, Memorex, whatever, so long as it's a brand you recognize. Staples brand and CompUSA brand don't count.

Why am I ranting about hard drive failure?

The primary data hard drive for my company server failed yesterday. Gone. Dead. Totaled. It was less than a year old. And it went from functioning perfectly to 100% failure in the space of a few hours. There was a little blip of an error in a log file. And then it died.

All the data on it is gone. Client files. Company files. Logos. Letters. Presentations. Financial Data. Accounting Data. Every script I've ever written for my comedy act. Every digital photo I've ever taken. All gone.

No problem.

I popped in my backup, which updates automatically every day at 4 AM, and voila!

100% data restoration in a few hours. And that's 130 Gigabytes of data we're talking!

As we put more and more of our lives on our computers, backups become more and more important.

So it's your choice. If you make backups, when your drive fails (note the 'when' not 'if'), it will be a minor hassle and perhaps a minor expense. Or you can put it off. And when your drive fails, it will be a disaster that costs thousands of dollars or worse ... you could lose the novel you've been writing for the last three years and all the photos of your loved ones.