Tag: data backup
What’s more important? Your stuff or the computer?
Ah, the question is posed yet again. What’s more important? Your data (stuff like pictures, music, taxes…) or your computer itself? I tell everyone that your stuff is way more important than a computer. I’ll explain with a short story.
You buy a computer. Many of our clients bought their first ones in 2003 when prices dropped like flies and you could buy them online easy. Many of our users still have these computers! The computers are starting to age, though, and are getting near the end of life. But those same clients, in all of these 9 years have never backed up their data. Are they lucky? Yes!! Losing your data can happen fast! Ask someone whose computer got zapped by a power outage; the computer is fried and sometimes the data is destroyed. Not all the time, but it has happened. Hard drives can also go bad just because…for no reason!
Backing up your stuff is so inexpensive, it is almost silly not to do it. External hard drives can be as low as $50 for 320 gigs and that can probably get all of your stuff on it. Online back up is a wee bit more at $5.99 a month to get started with 50 gigs. Click on the icon below to try online backup with 2 gigs for free.
Now back to the question, what is more important? A computer nowadays can cost $300 to $500 to replace a basic tower unit. How much are those pictures worth? Yep, they are priceless. Those music collections took years to burn on your computer and who knows how much time. Do yourself a favor and back up today! If you need our help, fill out the form below or call us to get help!
612-865-4475
Oops! We could not locate your form.
9 Great Tech Tips from Call That Girl
Here’s a list of some good tips I’ve come up with over the years that everyone should know!
9 Great Tech Tips from Call That Girl
- Test different laptops in the store before buying one online
- Updates can be found in the lower right corner of your screen in the system tray
- If your phone gets wet, turn it off and pull the battery out immediately! Turn it upside-down and place in rice to absorb the moisture.
- More often than not, Googling and doing a repair on your electronics yourself only costs more in the end.
- Your Outlook email files are saved in a hidden PST file on your computer that CAN be recovered, transferred and backed up.
- Most people keep very important and private information on their computers, so put a password on your computer for a little extra protection!
- Macs can in fact get viruses, so use caution on certain sites and links.
- Do the updates on your computer regularly, and not just your anti-virus! Viruses can sneak through outdated programs such as Java.
- If your cursor seems to jump around the screen a lot and messes up the document you are working on while typing on your laptop, your wrist may be bumping the mouse pad. Turn it off if you don’t use it.
World Backup Week, Are you backing up your stuff?
Today is World Backup Day, but of course it’s on a Sunday and barely anyone is going to do it. They should have scheduled it on a Tuesday or Wednesday when people aren’t relaxing and spending time with their families. Anyway, it’s April 1 and although my joke on Facebook that Best Buy sold Geek Squad and hired Call That Girl for their Minnesota onsite support got almost 60 likes in just an hour…. backing up your data…is no joke! Theft, fire, hard drive crashing, deleting your own stuff by accident, it all can happen…any time, any day.
Let’s talk about backing up! Solutions and stuff like that.
If you have never backed up your stuff, now is the time to consider it, at least do it once! Just think of all those pictures you would lose, memories gone forever. If you have never cried over missing memories, it’s not something you want to experience. Let’s also add in all the documents you have created, tax forms you have done, music collections you built, the list really can go on and on. So let’s get started….
For home users, I recommend monthly backup
For business users, I recommend daily backup
Here are some solutions
- External hard drives, they work great but can break and fail. The bonus of external hard drives is that you can take them from one computer to another fast and moving data in general is faster than online back up and restoring files.
- File sharing from two computers, using software such as Dropbox or other online sharing programs. I would not recommend this as your only backup solution, but it’s a good start.
- Online software such as Mozy. Click here to start a free 2 gig trial
- If you test it and buy it today (April 1) use this code to get 25% off your subscription Code: WORLDBACKUP
- Use this code for the month of April Code: MOZY4ALL
- Click here to just buy Mozy. Use the codes! They offer these randomly and I usually try to promote it as it’s a great deal. Also, as a preferred vendor of ours, we can help you set it up too for $59 if you would like our help. Their monthly payment plans are as low as $9.99 or $5.99.
- Click on the icon to get started or submit a request with us to help you do it. Sometimes it’s just easier for you if we do it. Many of our clients are thankful we have set them up with Mozy. And if you’re a Carbonite fan, I have had only problems with their software. I’m not a fan of Carbonite at all.
Click here to have us help, that’s what we are here for.
Are you a data hoarder, like me?
(pictures coming! they got lost in the website upgrade!)
That’s a picture of my hard drive on my laptop. Nice huh? I didn’t even think to look at the size of it until Windows alerted me that I was “very low on disk space” and earlier…my Dropbox told me that I was out of space there and I have a 50 gig account. Just because I run a technical business, doesn’t mean that I am technically perfect with my data. I do back up though, and that is important…but things are pretty sad when your assistant tells you that you are a hoarder. I can’t help it, I’m very creative, I’m a quick thinker and most importantly…I’m savvy enough to do a lot of things myself and FAST. If you’re like me, you may have the exact same issues. Our email boxes are clogged (because we are communications freaks and can never delete anything), our documents folders are insanely packed with little screen shots of everything we have made, images off the internet or just random thoughts of insanity (I have 100′s of text files from notepad lol). My beginnings have no ends! Well, they do have ends because I get stuff done, but now I need to really reign in these issues and take control for once. Stop the data hoarding. I will not hire a therapist!!!
It’s time for me to have a “data tune up” of sorts. Get some data off this computer and get things all squared up. …it’s time to let go. Free myself of years of data and stupid ideas that never went anywhere or worse yet, just OLD stuff that I MADE NEW to replace it. Why do I need that? The big question is, what do I need to keep and what can I pitch? I can’t pitch anything…I fear I will want to use it again or need it and there is no solid solution for me but to get yet even more data storage and figure out a way to search it fast and use it fast. Or…do the impossible and delete old data. <insert a tear here>
I started the data hoarding clean up with moving everything off of my laptop and into the Dropbox account. Then I went through the Dropbox data and moved anything past 3 months out of it and on to the computer at the office. That computer is also getting backed up daily from Mozy.com
What to do after that? Now I have moved all the data, but have I done anything that will help my data hoarding issue? I have to “go through” (my aunt’s favorite words) the data that I don’t need to use in my daily life yet again and delete, delete, delete unfortunately. I seriously do not need all of this data anymore! I still can’t delete, it’s like giving up a part of my soul.
Everything is in order for data deletion. Now…I can’t pull the trigger. But my laptop is now free of all that unused Dropbox data and it can breathe happy again. I gave the computer a whole tune up as well and it’s running quite nice now! Watch for part 2 next week of how I deleted my data and what steps I went through to get it cleaned up. I plan on doing it over the weekend, and it will be a tough one for me!
