Two weeks ago my laptop was stolen. Now that I have stopped crying...because even though I backed up all my hard work onto to flash drives... the culprit absconded with those too...most likely because the flash drives were next to the laptop. File this under "I know better!" I lost projects that I have been working on for years, seriously I'm not exaggerating, photos, project budgets. I can't go on because I will start crying again. Its like when your wallet gets stolen, you want to say to the robber "here take all my money and credit cards but for the love of all things holy please leave me my driver's licence and social security card!"
Last weekend I tried to think of a way to keep all of my important information safe. Really safe. I thought about saving it on an internet storage site, but I don't like all of my personal work on the internet. I thought about replacing the flash drives but you know, its only a matter of time before I would have lost one of those too. I thought about not even bothering to get a new laptop and just gettting a case of legal pads and a box of #2 pencils. After much thought I decided the plan would be to buy an external hard drive. You can get a 1TB (terebyte) hard drive now for about $90 and each Saturday morning I would back up my laptop and then store the hard drive in another location -- AWAY from the laptop.
I've stopped crying but every time I go to get something I really need... like last year's tax return I could vomit. Oh which is another good point DO NOT save any personal data on your computer, EVER! Save it to the new hard drive that you're going to run out and buy as soon as you are done reading this post.
Please heed my warning, I know better and this is one of those things that you think will never happen to you. If one of you can avoid this dreaded disaster than my grief will not have been in vain.
