Every once in a while, I’ll hear a commercial for backup software, or someone I follow on Twitter or Facebook will post a reminder to backup your data. Fortunately, I’ve followed the common-sense advice, and I have backups of most, if not all, of my important files.
Why am I telling you this? A couple weeks ago, I got a new portable hard drive that, ironically, I was going to use for more frequent backups. Sadly, it didn’t work, and I tried to reformat it to no avail. However, while trying to get it working, I somehow deleted enough from my main computer’s hard drive that – you guessed it – it was toast. It wouldn’t even boot; all I could see was a black screen with a blinking cursor that wouldn’t respond to anything.
Long story short, I was able to download and copy the Windows 10 ISO and reformat the hard drive, then reinstall Windows. All the other apps I use are readily downloadable, and all of my work files, documents, pictures, audio files, etc., have been backed up or are saved to the cloud, so despite the hours and hours I’ve lost reinstalling everything, I’ll be able to recover everything.
Learn from my experience, young Padawan. Either save your files to the cloud (One Drive, Google Drive, DropBox, etc.) or make sure you do frequent backups – or a combination of both. And… do it today!