Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Laptop thefts and data backups
During the fall 2007 semester, two students in my Writing for New Media class had their laptops stolen, one from a dorm room and the other from Cook Library. Make sure that if you use a laptop, yours is not the next to go: Don't leave it lying around anywhere out of your sight.
In the second case, the student's only backup was a flash drive that was in the laptop. That points to a critical lesson I was taught some time ago. For anything important that you are doing, you should keep your work in at least three places, one of which should be physical media (CD or DVD). I would recommend backing up your work at least once a day to CD or DVD or uploading it to Tiger or another FTP site (if you use Comcast or Verizon at home, you get free storage through them; otherwise, there are more than 100 online file storage services available, most for free).
Lessons for the day: NEVER leave your laptop out of your sight and ALWAYS keep a backup of important files somewhere other than with your laptop.
In the second case, the student's only backup was a flash drive that was in the laptop. That points to a critical lesson I was taught some time ago. For anything important that you are doing, you should keep your work in at least three places, one of which should be physical media (CD or DVD). I would recommend backing up your work at least once a day to CD or DVD or uploading it to Tiger or another FTP site (if you use Comcast or Verizon at home, you get free storage through them; otherwise, there are more than 100 online file storage services available, most for free).
Lessons for the day: NEVER leave your laptop out of your sight and ALWAYS keep a backup of important files somewhere other than with your laptop.
Labels: backup, laptop, security
