Backing up your stuff must be made a priority. Our computers have larger and larger capacity and we store more and more stuff. Consider what you might lose if your hard drive crashes or some one takes your machine. Money might be an interest. I notice that between the two computers I use I have accumulated more than 4000 songs in iTunes. Most are purchased rather than ripped. At approx. $1 a pop, the music is worth more than the computers. I could replace the music. Expensive, but I could. I could not replace the photos I have taken at the weddings of my 3 children or the photos I took the day I became a grand parent for the first time.
I have at least one backup attached to each of my machines. With the research servers I run, I have 7 external harddrives attached to various computers. Still, not enough.
I listen to Leo Laporte and he describes a backup strategy that requires two copies in two formats from two locations. His second format and copy tends to be Carbonite. This commercial service will automatically backup the content from one machine to the cloud for $60 a year. The price is reasonable, but I have some many machines.
Leo did discuss a product on one of his shows that we have decided to try. The product is called Pogoplug (my wife is the master of online shopping and I think she found it for $65. Plug the pogoplug into your router and attach an external hard drive and you have cloud backup you can reach from anywhere and from both computers and other devices (iPad). I purchased a 1.5 terabyte and the total cost was just a little over $200. Setup was easy – a couple of minutes and nothing fancy to figure out.
Pogoplug access from the iPad.
I connected the Pogoplug in my basement. This violates the two location rule, but attaching personal devices at the U is prohibited.
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