Therapists and Healing Artists: Are You Backing Up Your Computer?
I am amazed at how many therapists and healing professionals do not back-up their computers.
I have had several clients whose computers crashed and they lost all their data due to not backing up.
I recently had a client whose computer was stolen and she lost everything she had on her computer!
So what is the solution?
BACK-UP!
Back-up frequently and systematically. Here is what I recommend:
1. Get an external hard-drive. They cost about $50-100 and will hold
a lot of data. 100-200 GB and even more. Unless you are backing up a
lot of video files 100-200 GB should be enough.
2. Talk to your computer consultant about what software you need to
back-up your data automatically on a daily basis (back-up all data
including your email).
3. While an external hard drive with an automatic back-up is
important, it certainly won’t help you if there is a fire or your
computer is stolen. For this reason, I recommend you also use an online
data-backup company. You will then have an additional back-system in
case of fire of theft, but also in case something goes wrong with your
external hard drive back-up system. I use Mozy
Mozy allows you to automatically back-up your data as often as you
wish. You can use the free version for small amounts of data, or you
can pay about $50/year for unlimited amounts of data back-up. Mozy is also available for the Mac!
Why use both an external hard drive and an online backup system?
Because if your data is important to you, you won’t want to trust any one system alone!
If you are not already backing up–I hope you start doing it now!
