Survival of the Fittest

or, "Those who do not backup the past are condemned to re-type it."

Darren was talking about his new backup system, which included a new computer and I figured I'd repeat what works really well for me. I have a good computer at home, loaded with a bunch of software and a basic machine at school that is connected to the smart board.  I do not have any other tech toys and only a basic LG phone.

I have two 8GB thumbdrives (e.g., from TigerDirect.com. You could get them from Amazon, too.) "MY Documents" has a folder for academic videos and another for academic files. These two folders are synchronized with the two thumbdrives every day or so. At school I run everything off the two thumb drives, leaving nothing on the school's network. When I return home, I synchronize and thus never go more than a couple days without a simple backup.

For all my other files, I have an external USB drive (400GB, from Staples, Amazon, and many other places, ~$70)  This is connected about once a month or so and backs up ALL my files, including the academic ones, mail folders and system files.  Except for the mail folders, there's little on the home computer other than academic stuff that changes often so I'm okay there.

If you don't have a similar plan yet, you should start.