Yes that is sound advice. I have more data redundancy than proper backups on all those externals though. I preach images and backups to newer system owners that care. And not being a serial "imager" myself, I always preach copying and pasting important folders and files, sometimes even programs, from pc to external usb hdd, thumb, or whatever... firewire, burn a dvd data disc, cloud, etc. A good example, my sister said her laptop was on the skids two years ago so for that birthday bought her a 256gb 3.0 thumb drive and a 3.0 1tb wdc my passport. Told her to back up and do so regularly and get new laptop. A few months ago the hdd finally died. I said at least you have all your files, right? Well, no, she hadn't copy and pasted or backed up in a few months. Oh well, hahaha. She's lucky I had a spare laptop to give her last month, she was ready to run off to best buy and overpay for a low powered option that would fix the immediate problem.
I travel with backup drives and am always ready to clean install my workstation laptops while overseas. It's only happened 1.5 times in 15 years and downtime was the 2 hours spent personally doing clean install and re-installing programs. If nothing else it's peace of mind to be self-insured like that. But over the years I've been on other end of equation sourcing parts in a city like Bangkok or Hong Kong... also interesting and its own adventure. ;-) |
