What is the difference between a laptop and an office? In today’s world, for many people the only difference is a physical location, desk and chairs. The laptop has become the office.
The other day, I decided to inventory the documents I have on my laptop. I gave up almost before I started. I literally had thousands of document that I had written over the last 25 plus years. To me, the loss of this would be catastrophic. A couple of years ago, I began subscribing to a cloud based back up system. I consider this to be money well spent.
Recently, I lost my laptop and along with this treasure trove of documents. Luckily, I was able to restore almost 99 % of the documents in their original form. A few were not whole but easily fixable.
I have asked several people I know though my business connections about what they do to ensure the contents of their laptop are retrievable in case of loss or laptop crash. Many of them have a backup service. However, a disturbingly large number do not have anything in place. Some back up on a flash drive (losing that can create its own difficulties) and others email documents to themselves via their Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts (or something similar). The emailing technique is a solution albeit a cumbersome one.
There are several back up services or free on line storage services. While the service is free, they usually limit the storage space and to increase storage you need to pay a fee. Pay it and relax. After two such episodes, I speak with conviction!