How can I backup/recover my files?

With a recent rash of calls from customers in dire straits without a backup, here are some suggestions on ways to protect yourself from losing data. The most important thing I can tell you is: if you can't afford to lose it, BACK IT UP.

Both InDesign and Quark feature document recovery commands that will help you recover from a crash. But if the device you are saving to goes down, where will you stand? A portable storage drive such as Western Digital's MyBook provide an extraordinary amount of data backup at a very low price. The current market is about $200 for 1 Terabyte (1,000 gigabytes -- that's a lot of files!). These are pretty much ready to go as soon as you take them out of the box, plugging them into an available USB port without the need to load a driver. Keeping the drive in a fireproof safe adds another level of security.

Use your operating system! Apple's OS X Leopard features Time Machine, and Windows XP/Vista users have the backup/restore wizard, which is pre-loaded with the OS. Using these options with another drive -- such as the ones mentioned above -- make for a robust system.

Online backup companies such as Mozy or iDisk, or our own teamWORKS offer online backups for low rates. The nice thing about going online is that your files can be restored from anywhere in the world. A cheap alternative is to set up a Google Mail account and e-mail files to yourself -- a free standard account comes with almost seven gigabytes of storage and a 20 megabyte attachment limit. Be sure to choose a financially stable company.

If you've accidentally erased files off of a USB storage device (typically images from a digital camera), believe it or not, all is not lost! Check out Card Raider (Mac) or Digital Photo Recovery (Windows) -- they work quickly and efficiently.

If your drive physically crashes and you don't have a backup, there are specialist companies that still might be able to help. BeckITSystems and Drive Savers have both successfully recovered files for our customers at a reasonable price. Here's hoping you'll never face that scenario.

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