The Importance Of Backing Up

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I think if there is anything I've learned this week is that it is so important to back up your data on your computer. Anything can happen at anytime. Hard drives can fail. Your CPU can burn out. I had problems with my CPU fan last week, so I decided to give it a small cleaning. It wouldn't go back in properly with the screws when I was done, and there was a small accident, and two of the fins broke. It's working okay now, but I have a new fan on the way. It should be here sometime today. If the fan didn't work at all, or it worked too hot I might have had problems. It is good I was able to find a replacement fan because the fan I bought at Staples was too big to fit my system. You have to love non-standard equipment. I was able to find one from my computer manufacture though.

Just yesterday, one of the sites I work on had a complete shut down. The hosting company took the site off line. I think there was some disagreement there, but it is hard to tell. At first the hosting company was keeping the databases with all the sites information and not returning them at all. This would have made the site admin use a month old database to get the site back up and running. That means anything that had occurred on the site in the last month would have been completely lost. I looked at the items I had posted on that site in the last month, and I had a small panic moment because I didn't have much of the last month backed up at all. It looks like the current databases are being returned, but it still shows the importance of keeping your data in check and backed up. More than monthly too possibly. You just don't know what could happen and when.