We Didn’t Start The Fire, But We Can Prepare For It
Outside of family members and your pets (whom many like more than their family members, and for good reason), the number one thing that most people list as their top thing they would save from a burning home is family photos. This has actually been the top answer for several decades, across multiple generations.
For the longest time, the only copy of photos that capture moments in time of children taking their first steps, first dances at weddings, or epic vacations have been stored in binders or on the walls of your home. They truly are priceless, because they can’t be replaced. So it makes perfect sense that again and again, they are listed first on the list of must saves.
But times, they are a changing, as the song says. Or better put, times have changed. With the rise of the digital camera and the all-consuming smartphone age, most of our photos are digital. We only print out copies of photos, and can do so over and over again. Its fantastic and freeing, and feels significantly safer than having a box of film negatives tossed somewhere we have forgotten, long ago. But the truth is, it only feels safer. Instead of a box of negatives, we keep our photos in another box: the hard drive of a computer. While there are a ton of benefits to having digital copies of your precious photos on a computer, there are also some significant downsides that can make your photos perhaps more unsafe than the negatives your mom kept in the cigar box in the attic. Some computers are big and heavy, stashed under a desk with tons of wires and cables that keep it chained in place. They are also easily infected with viruses, trojans, malware, and ransomware (truly insidious software that will lock all of your files unless you pay people for the password).
We Didn’t Start The Fire, But We Can Prepare For It
So what can we do to ensure that these photos and other important files on our computers are safe? What if you didn’t even have to think about them in the case of a fire? You could just focus on getting you and your family to safety, and if you had the time grab something else on your list, knowing that your photos and files are still completely recoverable. This is where online backup comes in, and my service of choice: BackBlaze.
This isn’t a paid or sponsored article for Backblaze (it would be great if it was) but I’ve been using it for several years and have even used it to recover tens of thousands of photos when I had a hard drive crash on me. There are indeed other services like it, but I’ve found BackBlaze’s ease of use, price, and security to be perfect for what I need and want from it.
Here’s How BackBlaze Works:
BackBlaze is an application that once installed on either your home Windows PC or Mac (it works and costs the same on both), will continually back up either the entire computer, or whatever drives or folders you direct it to, to the cloud. Of course the “Cloud” in this case, like every instance of the “Cloud” is a computer (server) in some storage facility far away from your home. I know on its surface that doesn’t sound good, but its actually great! Not only does sending a copy of your files away from your home protect you from losing your only copy, all of the information that BlackBlaze backs up to their server’s is encrypted — meaning that its not just sitting there in the open for anyone to have access to — its protected, only you can access it. The company itself doesn’t even have access to your files, and multiple third-party organizations have reviewed BackBlaze’s setup and have confirmed: your data is safe and for your eyes only.
As long as you have the internet connected to your machine with BackBlaze installed and continue to pay for the service (which is an extremely affordable $6/month or $60 a year), your data will always and nearly instantly be backed up. Its a fantastic piece of mind knowing that there is a backup of your precious photos and other important documents, but this other copy is safe from harm, away from your house.
One important bit of information that I didn’t know about before I started using it was that depending on the size of what you’re wanting to back up, that initial backup will take a LONG time. Possibly days or even weeks. The nice thing is that once it has backed everything up, it should be able to handle any changes you make to your files or computer in a quick manner.
What Happens When Disaster Strikes?
I’m in the firm belief that there is a computer disaster waiting out there for everyone. Not trying to scare you, just saying, it happens. Perhaps your only computer is a laptop — you’re one good coffee spill or theft away from losing all your data. Maybe your computer is a desktop tower or all-in-one system — you’re just a decent electrical surge away from all your files getting zapped. None of these are happy thoughts, but its best to prepare for these disasters now so that when they do strike, you can rest a little easier knowing that you can easily recover your digital memories.
I know this because it happened to me. I still don’t know HOW it happened, but the external hard drive I had all my family photos (over 400 GB) stored on, just up and stopped working one day. Wouldn’t mount. No computer I plugged it into could read it. It was just gone. But honestly I didn’t panic because I knew I had BackBlaze. What I didn’t know was how awesome their recovery options are! First, they have an option right on their website to download the files from their server. That’s nice and fine for a couple files or folders, but not to recover a whole hard drive of that size. Even with a faster internet connection, its just not timely or easy. Their other option, the one I chose, is to send me an encrypted (password protected) hard drive in the mail filled with all of the data I lost. The cool thing is that while they charge you approximately $100 or so for the hard drive, if you ship it back to them when you are done, they refund you 100% of what you spent! It was fantastically easy and within about a week I had all my files back and I had sent the hard drive back for a refund. Stupid easy. I really can’t recommend them enough.
Unless you know for sure that disaster will never strike your hard drives or computer (maybe you are Nostradamus? Who seemed to be better at making vague educated guesses than true predictions…dang it Nickk, now is not the time for this), I highly encourage you to look into online backup services like BackBlaze. If for some reason you don’t want to use BackBlaze, they do have competitors like IDrive, Acronis, and Carbonite, which all have their pluses and minuses, just like BackBlaze, but they all essentially do the same thing: create a backup copy of your data away from your home. Please look into one today and give yourself that peace of mind that you deserve.
Stay safe out there.
