subject: Why You Should Always Back Up Your Data [print this page] Why You Should Always Back Up Your Data Why You Should Always Back Up Your Data
With all the cameras being digital these days, it is more critical than ever to back up your data on your hard disk.
So many people these days just load their digital pictures onto their computer and think they are safe.
The truth is, they are not. If ever a hard disk quits working, or a virus erases all your data, then you lose all your photos.
As a computer technician, I see this problem so often. And to make thinks worse, you can't go back and reshoot your photos, unless you have been able to go back in time.
One way to prevent you from losing your photos is to copy them to an external hard drive. There are many manufactures of these drives and they usually connect to your computer with a USB port.
All you have to do is copy the images (make sure you copy and not move) to the external device. If your computer does crash, you can easily copy your photo files from the external device back to your computer.
If you are using a Windows operating system, your photos are most likely stored in your "My Pictures" folder. Anytime you download new pictures or edit existing ones, you should copy the "My Pictures" folder to your external disc drive.
Right click in the "My Pictures" folder, then click "Copy". Then navigate to the external drive (usually a different driver letter). Once you are looking inside the external drive, right mouse click again, but this time click on "Paste". This should copy all your pictures to your external drive.
It may take a while, depending on how many photos you have to copy.
If you encounter a message asking you to overwrite existing files, choose the option to overwrite. It's OK to overwrite because you are wanting your external drive to have all the latest versions of your files.
You should also copy any documents that you may have to the external drive too. Any data you don't want to lose should be copied to the external drive.
These files can be copies to the external drive using the same steps as above, except this time selecting the documents you want to have backups of.
The external drive will cost you some money, but it will seem like a small price to pay as apposed to losing all your precious pictures or critical files.
