I am pretty anal when it comes to backing up files. I have about 12 hard drives connected to my computer. Five of them are there to back up what is on the other drives. I also have another 10 external drives in my closet with files I am mostly not using any longer, but very well might in the future. If I need them I can pull the drive out and connect it to my computer. I also have important files like weddings backed up on discs and stored at another site away from my office. Another thing I do is after I do a photo shoot, I back up the files from the shoot onto another hard drive and put it in my shed, which is detached from my home. I figure if the house burns down, the shed is far enough away to stay safe. Like I said, I am pretty anal about backing things up. If you are not backing up your files, especially your important or valued files, do it now.
There are a couple online storage sites that I have been experimenting with as well. Online storage makes a lot of sense. Important files are stored far away, giving you just one more tool in case something goes seriously wrong. I am a big fan of dropbox.com. They give you two gbs of storage free. It's a great way to share files that are too large to email, or to store public files for linking to, or to synchronize a desktop and laptop, or for just plain old storage. Another online storage site is Carbonite. Today Carbonite.com announced that they now have a Mac compatible service. For $55 a year you can upload an unlimited amount of data. Any changes you make along the way gets automatically uploaded, so it is a fairly worry free, carefree service. I am using it now on a trial basis, but am thinking this will be a valuable tool.
One more tidbit about external hard drives: Last week I had a Western Digital My Book 500 gb hard drive act up. I could not get it to mount or be recognized by my computer. I tried all kinds of ways to make it work . . even tried it on my laptop . . nothing. I decided to try something I read about last year. I put the hard drive in a sealed plastic bag and then put it in the freezer. I left it there overnight. The next day I took it out of the freezer and out of the plastic bag and let it sit for awhile until it got to room temperature. I then plugged it into my computer. Bingo. It started right up and was instantly recognized by my computer. Not sure what the mechanics are for this, or if the freezer was the deciding factor, but my hard drive is now working and not sitting in the trash can.
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