For my first blog post I wanted to address the most difficult problem that we deal with at The Computer Monkey. It isn’t the most difficult from a technical stand point. But, it is extremely sad and difficult to tell someone that their important files are gone. For our business users, the loss of important data can be very costly. For our home users, losing cherished family photos is heartbreaking. Hard drive crashes and other data loss events can happen at any time, even on a new computer.

There are so many options today: flash drives, external hard drives and online back-up services. Flash drives are good if you do not have very much to back-up or you want to keep something in a safe deposit box. External hard drives are getting less expensive all the time, but you still have to be diligent about doing it on a regular basis and recently changed files could get missed in periodic back ups. Even with software that will constantly back up your files to an external drive, you still want to consider keeping a fairly recent master back-up off-site in case of a disaster. Because of the convenience and off-site safety, my back-up of choice these days is an online service. We use and recommend Carbonite here at The Computer Monkey. Regardless of what back-up type works best for you, just make sure you do it! Contact us if you would like help in evaluating your options or if you need help setting up a back-up device or service.