A kb of prevention is worth a MB of cure

To my dear readers,


I just received an e-mail from a student that had lost all her/his assessments (for all of her/his courses), due to a hard drive crash.


A sad story -- but avoidable.


As soon as you can $$$ afford it -- please promise that you'll do the following for me:

1) Buy an external (USB) hard drive, and once a week back up to it. Otherwise, keep it unplugged (to protect it from power surges!), and hidden (e.g. behind some books on the bookshelf), to minimize the risk of it getting lost in a burglary.

2) Buy another external HD and once a month back up to it. Keep it "off site" (e.g. at a relative's house, in the closet). (A good technique is to swap the two external HDs -- so, once a month bring your "weekly" HD to your relative's, and take the "monthly" HD home with you; the two HDs have now traded roles.)

3) At the end of each "session" (i.e. when you turn off the computer for the night), back up your projects to your USB key! I tend to name them with the date (e.g. "_2008_1014a") at the end, so I **know** which one is the newest version! If you do several versions on the same day, call them "a" "b" "c", etc. This is also good if your file somehow gets corrupted...


(If you can't afford #1 and #2, but you have a DVD burner -- do that (i.e. write to a DVD-R)! Or, get a 4GB or 8GB USB key...)


--GG