NetProfits Web Design

Safeguard Your Data with Regular Backups

2010-03-17T08:40:00.000-04:00

Over the past nine months, I have talked with multiple customers who have experienced hard drive crashes or lost data due to viruses. We recommend that you take some precautions to avoid catastrophic data loss due to this type of problem with your computer. Consider all of the documents you maintain, emails you send and receive, data files from other programs and the various applications you have installed on your system. When you're computer crashes you need to re-install your programs and restore your data. You have two main options for backing up your data.

1. Use an external hard drive with software on your computer that automatically backs up your entire system on a regular basis, either daily or at least once a week. You can buy 100+ GB external hard drives for under $100. You need to make sure your computer can connect to either a USB or Firewire drive and purchase the correct drive.

There are a variety of software programs for handling backups. We use Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/) which can create an exact snapshot of your computer. Then if your computer crashes, you can restore the backup and your computer is exactly as it was before the crash. I actually had this happen last September and was able to get my computer up and running in a few hours without losing anything.

You may also want to invest in a fireproof safe and keep the external hard drive in the safe when not being used.

2. Use an online backup service. This is generally used for data backups vs. your complete computer. We've used Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com/) which is about $55/year. Here is an article that reviews a number of other services: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp

Whatever method you choose, you should definately be backing up your computers on a regular basis. You don't realize how much information you use daily until it is gone and you are paying to have a company restore your hard drive and wasting precious time waiting for your information.

Staying Organized

2010-02-13T12:26:00.000-05:00

For several years I have wanted to find a better way to organize all the information that I track on a regular basis. For example, my To Do list, notes from phone conversations or meetings, screen shots or ideas from web sites when I'm researching a specific topic, project information for clients, etc. Of course, when you're busy all the ideas get pushed to the back and you just do what you've always done which is keep a bunch of folders, papers and sticky notes.

In this digital age, there really should be a way to manage all this information easily, store it for easy retrieval, search it and add to it without needing to go hunting for a folder full of papers. I received an email recently which mentioned a site called EverNote which just happens to provide all of those features and more. And the basic version is free. If you're interested, check it out at http://www.evernote.com/.

My only concern was security and control of MY information. Then I remembered that Microsoft Office includes a program I had never used called OneNote. After researching that, I found that it handles everything I need to do for tracking "notes". So I am now using OneNote and so far it has been very helpful. I can easily add information from almost anywhere including emails, documents, web sites, etc. I can tag items, search for information (even text from scanned photos), and organize everything in a variety of ways. If you have Microsoft Office, you should check it out: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote.

Here's to being more productive...

Time to fly

2010-01-28T17:15:00.000-05:00

This blog is way overdue. We recommend that our clients create blogs all the time but we're always too busy to do it ourselves. One of my goals for 2010 was to spend some time each day doing the things I've put off for way too long. This is one of them. So here we go...