Not IF but WHEN

Aren't bad things supposed to come in threes? I'm just experiencing fours, in terms of storage.

First, over a couple of weeks I saw warning from my android phone about occasional difficulty writing to the micro SD card, and then last week a warning to back it up followed by a note that it was unmounted. Fortunately when I took the card out of the phone I could read all its contents BUT I could not write to the card or even reformat it. Ok new card required (they are not all that expensive) and I had been doing monthly updates to my photo library. So nothing lost, at worst it might have been a few recent photos.

SO HAVE YOU BACKED UP THOSE PHOTOS ON YOUR PHONE RECENTLY? NO?

DO IT NOW.

I'm not going to go into detail but there are dozens of ways to get your photos off your phone, into the cloud and/or onto a computer Backup or Archive. Just expect your phone to be stolen, disappear, fall in the water or otherwise stop. If you have anything of personal value on it don't hesitate backup now!

Second was a strange corruption of a file on the memory card in my camera. At first I suspected the little USB card reader (which every now and the refuses to register on the device reading it). However swapping cards showed the problems was just a specific file on one SD card. Or the problem could be in the camera (hope not). Again the bigger faster SD cards I now use are more expensive but replacing it was an obvious tactic. Don't just leave your big SD cards to fill up. You can fit fair number of photos on 64GB and/or 128GB cards but then you loose a lot of photos if something goes wrong.

INGEST THOSE PHOTOS FOR YOUR SD CARD ONTO YOUR COMPUTER OR CLOUD REGULARLY!

DO IT NOW.

Third, I pulled out my backup portable hard drives (I have two set of 1TB & 2TB disks that I alternate one set in my office and one set offsite) in preparation for the monthly update and rotation. Unfortunately the one that was due to take the months incremental files was completed dead, No even a glimmer of life or flicker of the power on light. Again nothing lost, I still had the Master copy on my computer and the off site copy. However now replacement of the hard disk is starting to get expensive.

ARE YOU FOLLOWING THE 3-2-1 BACKUP STRATEGY. DO YOU HAVE AN OFF-SITE BACKUP?

DO IT NOW

The final insult came in the form of a BIOS message as my ailing studio computer attempts to start up. The cost of and capacity of traditional spinning platter magnetic hard disks have improved a lot, prices for the same capacity are significantly lower and the capacity has increased. However now there is the added complication and difficulty of opening up the computer finding the right replacement and the time to restore all the data, programs and get things back to normal. The cost of paying someone else to do this will be frightening.

RESTORING A COMPUTER THAT HAS CRASHED CAN BE A LENGTHY AND TEDIOUS PROCESS. IS YOUR DATA ROUTINELY BACKED UP? DO YOU HAVE A RECOVERY BACKUP?

MAKE THAT RECOVERY BACKUP AND LEARN HOW TO USE IT

Take it from me, these things will happened.