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By Root 4066 0

images), I utilize my MobileMe service. Each night, my computer connects to .Mac and uploads the last accounting software file, my address book, my calendar of assignments, my e-mail accounts and settings, and a few other pieces of data that I cannot live without. For PCs, there are offsite solutions with which you can accomplish a similar level of protection; Carbonite.com and Mozy are two excellent choices. Although I am not familiar with all the brands, I can tell you that for around $100 a year, it's one of the better investments you can make in your backup plan. Additionally, I carry a thumb drive that can hold 2 GB of data for a very reasonable price. I can carry with me all my financial data (encrypted with password protection in case I lose the thumb drive), my address book, disk images of my critical applications (such as Photoshop and others), plus my serial numbers in the event that I have to reinstall my software in some remote location.

Backing Up Your Desktop

Setting aside for a moment the loss of data, there is another very important reason to ensure that your desktop computer is entirely backed up—the cost of restoration. No doubt you have spent a great deal of time personalizing your computer, from the mundane (such as bookmarks in your web browser), to installed programs, to the settings of those programs. If you've ever had to erase a computer and start all over from scratch, it usually takes at least a day, and then you spend a great deal of time reinstalling small applications or Photoshop plug-ins to do what you normally do. There are numerous solutions for backing up your desktop computer, and the benefit is that if your hard drive or other equipment fails, all you need to do is make the necessary replacement and then use the Restore Backup feature of the software, and your computer will be just like it was the last time you backed up. A truly safe computer user will have two backups, one that it does weekly and one that it does nightly. Although I think hourly backups are overkill, there are some who find them comforting.

The important thing is to establish a backup solution and then be vigilant about maintaining it.

Backing Up Your Laptop

With the figures mentioned earlier in this chapter, you have a one in ten chance of having your laptop stolen and a one in seven chance of it crashing. With odds like those, how soon do you think it will happen to you (or happen again)? And, do you think you'll likely be on the road, without access to your home computer for a period of time when this happens? My solution, as with my desktop, is to maintain a vigilant backup plan for my laptop as well. The one difference is that I always take my nightly backup on the road with me—it is a 100-GB pocket disk drive that takes up little space. Further, should my machine fail, with my Mac I can find any current-model Apple and reboot, holding down the Option key, and choose my backup pocket drive as the boot volume. Then, I'm up and running on my system, with my data, on someone else's hardware. Even the desktops at an Apple store will do. (Although you will probably incite a bit of consternation from the employees, but maybe it's only for a few minutes or while you are waiting for them to ring up your replacement laptop!) Plus, when you boot the laptop—again a benefit of Macs—you can, within just an hour or two, transfer all the settings from the drive to your new machine. PCs have comparable software from companies such as Symantec and others that will provide a similar level of backup and restore capability. This would mean that you could be back up and running when you wake up the next morning after your restore was completed, if not between lunch and dinner.

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NOTE

As a kind of "the gods are watching" aside, at 2:00 this morning I found myself needing to get up from my laptop to attend to my daughter, who was having a bad dream. As I moved away from my laptop, my foot caught the power cord, and the laptop went crashing to the floor. Fortunately, it was a carpeted floor and no damage was