Don't lose your data

I was talking to one of my customers this morning who had to evacuate her home in San Diego due to the fires. She mentioned to me that even though she was relatively well prepared as to what to take with her - she had gone through a similar experience 4 years ago - she realized that she had too much stuff she wanted to keep and not enough room to put it in her car. She mentioned that she barely had room to bring her computer.

I asked if she had a backup of her data stored online somewhere and she said that she didn't. I then shared that I have my data backed up in two places: at home on a separate drive (in case my computer's hard drive dies) and on-line (in case there is a fire or some other disaster that destroys my data at home.) She suggested that I should post this here since there may be others who can benefit from this.

I have been using a service called Carbonite to store my data online. It is a very inexpensive service that automatically backs up my data every day. That's the best part - that I don't have to remember to do anything and the program does this automatically. You can check them out and take a free trial.

While I understand that there is a risk that data online could be compromised, I'm willing to take that chance since the risk of me losing it all in a fire or other disaster is there too. There is ALWAYS a risk.

While we never think something like losing a home to a fire is going to happen to us, this past week has reminded us that it can easily happen.

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