Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Always Have a Back Up!

I work part-time from home, so I keep all of my files on an external hard drive that I carry back and forth between my home and the office.  Well, I should say that I had kept my files on an external hard drive. . . that was, until I dropped it.  :(

After many attempts by well-meaning friends and co-workers, we've determined the data to be "irretrievable" - since we can't really afford to pay an expert to look at it.  I had good reasons for using the hard drive as my primary storage location (i.e. there wasn't enough disk space on either my home or work desktop to hold all the files), and I honestly never gave much thought to having a back-up.  Now, three and a half years of articles, logos, newsletters, advertisements, pictures and design work are gone.

It's been about a month since I dropped the drive and still, as I type this, I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I'll admit that I did cry over my "spilled milk," but I've had to move on - going back through my e-mail attachments to retrieve files and humbly recreating designs I'd originally spent hours working on.

I've learned a valuable lesson that, I'm sure, everyone else already knows and adheres to, but it bears repeating - always have a back-up! 

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