Back it up! Part One

My goodness, has it been so long since I posted anything new? <sigh> School gets in the way so much.

Speaking of school, our colleague’s anguish over having his flash drive (memory stick) go south (yes, it can happen; it’s never happened to me, bli ayin hara, ptoo, ptoo ptoo) got me to thinking about the importance of backing up our precious files. I’ve got 15 years worth of worksheets, vocabulary pages, tests, quizzes, sources et cetera sitting on my computer. What if God forbid something happened to it? (Stolen, broken, etc.)

There are a few ways we can back up our files. Simple ways include copying what’s on our flash drive to our home computers. Click Start, My computer, find your drive, open it, select all (ctrl+A) and click Copy selected items on the left menu. Create a backup file on your hard drive and copy it.

Do it often. Every night before you go to bed, like brushing your teeth.

Of course, if you’re robbed or hit with a flood or something, you’re still in trouble.

If you have a CD burner drive (or even better, a DVD burner), once a month or even more, you should copy all your important files (especially, teachers, all your documents, tests, etc.) on to a CD. They’re so cheap you can afford to do it often. (I correct myself – they’re inexpensive; I’m cheap.) Store the backup CD away from your computer.

In a future post we’ll discuss more radical means of saving your material, including free internet backup sites. So if God forbid you have a fire, your files will be safe in cyberspace.