{"id":572,"date":"2014-07-07T13:43:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T18:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/?p=572"},"modified":"2014-07-07T13:46:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T18:46:07","slug":"the-easiest-way-to-back-up-your-files-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/the-easiest-way-to-back-up-your-files-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easiest Way to Back Up Your Files, Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"timemachine\"<\/a>Quick, let’s go back and save fourteen year-old me!
\n<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

When I was a middle-school teenager, back in the era of one computer per household, my dad got mad at me for something- I don’t recall what.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, I logged into the family computer, and discovered my personal folder on the hard drive- the repository for everything I did- missing.\u00a0 Not in the trash, not in a different folder, just gone like it never existed.<\/p>\n

“You must’ve downloaded a virus,” Dad told me, matter-of-fact.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t studying Computer Science yet, but even then I knew that was bullshit.\u00a0 Nothing else on the computer was missing, no programs were acting up.\u00a0 The computer was fine.\u00a0 As revenge for whatever I’d done, Dad had deleted my personal folder and emptied the trash.<\/p>\n

I’d never backed up any of my stuff.\u00a0 Homework assignments, stories, pictures, music, personal website- gone.\u00a0 I cried, for days.\u00a0 Dad continued to maintain it was my own fault… while quietly ordering a disk recovery program out of guilt.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if disk recovery programs suck now, but they sure sucked back then.\u00a0 All I retrieved were a few sentences here and there from works in progress, littered with garbage symbols.<\/p>\n

The approach was malicious and immature, but ultimately, Dad taught me the important lesson of taking computer backups seriously.\u00a0 Back then it meant hiding boxes of 3.5″ floppies in my bedroom closet, but I didn’t care.\u00a0 Many years later, a total hard drive failure on my school computer proved no big deal at all.<\/p>\n

Most people never consider making backups until they lose something important.\u00a0 Granted, most people never have to worry about someone in their own household erasing their data and then lying about it- but if you store anything of importance on your machine, don’t wait for a harsh lesson.\u00a0 Don’t wait ’til you read more about the best methods, or save up for new hardware, or any of that.<\/p>\n

Log into your personal email.\u00a0 Right now.\u00a0 Compose a new message- subject and body don’t matter.\u00a0 Attach whatever files you’d die<\/em> without, as the max file limit allows.\u00a0 (For me, that’s my manuscript<\/a>.)\u00a0 Put your own email address in the To bar, then click Send.<\/p>\n

\"inbox1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Voila- a backup now lives in your inbox.\u00a0 Huge peace of mind for only a few seconds of effort!\u00a0 This method doesn’t work for everything- only items small enough to fit in an email- but if you’ve never done any backing up at all, this is a good start!<\/p>\n

Here are some other ways I back up important files, all much less clunky than having to track and inventory 50 floppies (hooray for the future!).\u00a0 The hardware mentioned below is easily found on Amazon, and gets cheaper all the time:<\/p>\n