Here we go again, folks. Last week I heard an interview with a relatively popular musician. He mentioned that he’d recently spilled a glass of rye on his laptop keyboard during a recording session. I’m not sure why he had a rye during the session but maybe that’s how he relaxes. The singer was relieved that he hadn’t lost all of his music, words and ideas but he came close. Believe it or not, the interviewer mentioned that he had recently done the same thing and almost lost the book he’d been writing. I listened and thought, “Wow! Two people who are creative but not too bright when it comes to common sense computing.”

First, if you have material on your computer that is important to you, sign up for Dropbox. It’s free, simple and ensures that nothing you create will be lost if something untoward occurs. Check out my post on Dropbox here:  Dropbox – 6 reasons why you should be using it now.  Briefly, if you save your work to your Dropbox folder, you can access it online from anywhere in the world. The free 1 gigabyte of storage is ample for most needs but if you need more, you can get up to 16 gigs through referrals or, more simply, pay a premium for more space. I’m a writer and I save everything I write to my box and I haven’t used more than a quarter of the space. Besides keeping your stuff safe, Dropbox saves old versions of your work, just in case you make a save error somewhere along the line. You can access these old versions by logging into your account online.

TIP: If you need more space, refer yourself a few times using your other email addresses. For each referral, you get another gig of space. Honestly though, I have lots of pics and articles in my folder and I still have 750 megs left open.

Next, a Dropbox account is a sensible part of backing up your computer but it’s not a complete solution. In the next few posts I will (again) run through the various steps that you need to perform in order to keep your creative efforts safe. If you’re an artist, a business type, teacher or just about any other profession, backing up your computer relieves stress and might just keep you employed.

Thanks for reading!

If you can’t wait, look for my older posts on backups here: How to back-up your computer Part 1   My next few posts will explain all of this using the latest software but the older posts are still effective.