'PC' Steve Gibson: Protect Your Digital Memories

In my work as a PC repair person, the one thing I see most often is the concerned face of young parents who are bringing me their broken laptop computers, or desktops, or VHS tapes, or even their digital cameras. Or the faces of older folks who have spent weeks or months scanning old photos and slides, only to have their computer lock up.

Why so concerned?

They're afraid that they are about to get the bad news that all of the photos or movies or scanned finger-paintings are lost forever; that something terrible has destroyed the memory in the device and taken their memories with it.

Fortunately, it's only very rarely that I'm not able to retrieve most, if not all of the data. But it's not free to do that, and it's certainly not a 100% sure thing. In fact, in one case, I had to quote someone a price of almost $2,000 to try to retrieve data from a bad hard drive.

So, today I'd like to suggest you take some time to begin the process of insuring your digital memories will last you throughout your lives, and into the future.

First of all, remember this simple rule: 3-2-1.

That signifies that you need at least three copies of everything you want to save. Two of those copies should be on different media—maybe one copy on a hard drive and one copy on a DVD, for example. And at least one of those copies should be off-site—like at a relative's house, or in a safe deposit box.

Now, how can you accomplish this easily? The most common backup is to burn a CD or DVD. This is not always as simple as it sounds—and a lot of time can be wasted figuring out how to fit photos on a CD, or double-checking to be sure the burn process completed successfully. But once you get the process down, it's not too complex.

A second, easier way is to purchase an external hard drive and use that to keep your copies. Most external drives come with backup software, and once you get them hooked up and running, the process is also simple.

However, the easiest, and newest method, is to use something that's come to be know as "the cloud." That's a geeky way of saying, "Save it on one or more remote file servers located on the Internet." Using this system, you load a little bit of software on your computer when you boot up, select the files you want to save, and then the software saves the files—updating the saved files whenever you add more, or make changes to the ones you have.

My favorite cloud solution for backup is Carbonite, although there are competitors, like Mozy. Using Carbonite, you pay one annual fee, and get an unlimited amount of backup. Your files are accessible from everywhere—including your Smartphone—and when the inevitable disaster strikes you simply fix the problem, load Carbonite, and hit restore. Voila! Your files reappear where they were.

The downside of the cloud option is that it costs money to use—about $60 per year for Carbonite. And that's as much as you'd spend for a 500GB external drive or 300 DVDs to backup on. The upside is it's simple and foolproof.

How are you backing up today? Leave a comment or email me at steve@completek.biz. Also, if you have any technology questions, from PCs to iPhones, from HDTV to Security Cameras, let me know and i'll address them here.

Editor's note: Steve is a Geneva, IL, businessman with an address at 825 W. State St., #103D.