After having a bit of a scare with the database that contains every post for The Canadian Finance Blog, I thought it might be a good time to remind everyone to regularly back up their documents. While your first thought may be the My Documents folder on your PC, another worthwhile project is scanning any important documents such as wills and insurance papers to PDF as a way to backup and organize your paper documents.
Paper documents and receipts can be scanned with any flatbed scanner, though if you’re looking for a fast document scanner, the ScanSnap S300 is highly rated. Even using a digital camera is an option, especially when paired with Snapter, though the cost of the software might be better used towards buying a scanner. Save these files in your My Documents folder so they’ll be backed up with your other files like Word and Excel. Before you shred everything, keep in mind that you may still need to keep some of the original documents in a fire safe or safe deposit box.
For backing up the files on your computer, try the freeware version of SyncBack. SyncBack allows you to schedule files to automatically copy to another hard drive or through FTP. At least occasionally, copying to a USB drive or external drive may be a good option for most so that you can store the backup away from the computer. Locations may include the fire safe or safe deposit box, but even a relative’s house or at work would be a good way to keep it off site and easy to access when you need it. While you know where to find your documents and pictures, make sure you also backup the email file (for Outlook, it’s a *.pst), bookmarks, and anything else you want to protect from events like hard drive failure, theft, fire and flooding.
As for myself, I’ve procrastinated in the past but have had enough near-catastrophes that it was finally time to get my backups setup. I now have automatic daily backups for the documents on my computer AND automatic daily backups of The Canadian Finance Blog.
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Great recommendations!
I’ve also used software called Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/) for off-site sync of some files that I don’t want to lose. With it, you have the added advantage of accessing the files on any PC you’re installed their client on, and the transfers and date on their servers is encrypted.
There are some other similar services out there too.
I use Windows Mesh, mesh.com all the time to keep all of my many pc’s in sync. It also allows me to remote desktop into any of the PC’s in my mesh. Mac version as well.
I enthusiastically recommend Evernote, not just for important documents, but for just about anything you don’t want to deal with now but will want later.
The paid version has encryption to better protect your important documents. The ScanSnap you mentioned can be set up to scan directly into Evernote, and Evernote will make all text in pdfs, photos, and other images searchable.
If your house burns down, you can access it from another computer, and you can have it sync across devices as well, including the iPhone, Palm Pre, and I think Blackberry.
You can fire all your office docs and other types of files into it too.
My favourite, though, is if you put an EyeFi card into the standard SD card slot in any digital camera, you can set it up to upload your pics to Evernote wirelessly as soon as the Eyefi finds an open wireless signal. So if you buy something expensive, proving that you have it in your home insurance is as easy as taking a snapshot of it.
Great suggestions guys! As I mentioned, after too many close calls I’m just recently converted to doing regular backups, so I’ll look into all of them!