Back Up, Back Up, Back Up and Back Up

We've all been there -- your computer crashes, and holy crap -- you forgot to save.

Of course, it gets even worse when your hard drive dies. We recently experienced that -- but thankfully, almost everything (except a few music files) was saved. Our pals Tony and Becky also had to reconstruct their hard drive after a massive failure.

That's what Don Barrett -- who writes and publishes LARadio.com, the definitive daily chronicle of all things radio in Los Angeles -- is now dealing with.

Don hasn't been able to publish LARadio.com this week due to a complete hard drive collapse. Much of his eight years of archives has been lost; in an email to his website subscribers today, Don explained the problem:

There is a painful lesson for all of us - the key is to back up everything we do. Even though I did back up, I didn't do it with consistency. I have since been told about a service that will automatically back up your complete hard drive every day without you having to do anything. The retrieval process seems to be confined to a handful of companies in the country. It requires a "white room" or "clean room" with technicians in a completely sterile environment wearing suits and masks. A company in Novato (SF) has estimated a retrieval cost, depending on amount and difficulty, somewhere between $500 and $2,400 with a 5-7 business day turnaround. Yikes!

Meanwhile, we have installed a new hard drive and are now working with my LARadio server. We are securing software to get the column back in gear at the earliest on Thursday.

You know what I know. Backup, back up, back up, and back up.

Sage advice. I've been meaning to do that with our iBook, before we lose our music and photo files.