Protect Your Files

Are you doing anything to protect all your files?  Your family pictures, clip art, school work, products you've created, etc...

I have heard heart breaking stories of teachers and their computers crashing.  Then all their data, files, and photos are gone!  I cannot imagine!

After hearing about this happening to several people that I know, I started checking into what I could do to protect myself.  I am a person who likes to research things a bit before deciding and figuring out what will work best for me.  Here are some options I considered before I made my decision.

Flash Drives 

When I first started researching what would work for me, some people told me they used flash drives to store everything.  But I have read that some people's flash drives failed on them.    Same for external hard drives.  And the REAL reason I chose not to go with flash drives or external hard drives is that I would have to go in and save all my files that I already have.  I have a LOT of files.  I know myself and I know that I would not go through and save all my old stuff.  Plus, I might forget to save new items.  So on to the next idea....

 Dropbox

Dropbox is GREAT!  I love it for what I use it for.  In the past, I would need to send a file to myself at school.  I would email it and sometimes it would go through and sometimes the file would be too large.  Dropbox to the rescue!!  What a wonderful way to share files!  I drop a file into my Dropbox account and it is there when I get to school and need it.  I know some teachers use Dropbox completely for ALL their files.  They store everything there. It is safe and easy to use.  But, again, what gets me for my own personal style is I know I won't go through all my old files and resave them.  So I use Dropbox for files that I share and that I need access to from different places.  

If you decide to use Dropbox, click here to get started or on the picture above.

 Carbonite

Carbonite is what I ended up going with.  It has been so easy and effortless to use!  You don't have to do anything other than sign up.  I do pay for this ($59.99 per year).  For me this is totally worth it not to lose all the clip art and blog photos, plus family pictures and files that my computer is storing.  And the HUGE plus for me was I didn't have to go back and manually save everything I already have saved.  Carbonite does it for you!  All my TpT files, clip art that I have purchased, every-thing is backed up for you.  All my previously saved and everything I save now is automatically backed up.  It just gives me piece of mind if my computer decides to blow up or just mysteriously die, my files are still safe.  You can sign up for a free trial even.  It will take a while for all your files to be backed up at first, but Carbonite does that in the background for you.  If you are interested in Carbonite, click here to get started or click the picture above.

I hope this information on protecting your files helps you.  These are just ideas that work for me and give me peace of mind.  It is important to do something if you have things on your computer that you do not want lost forever.