Hi there. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? Plenty of people have probably given you good advice about backing up your computer, and you probably said something like, “yeah, I should do that.” Here’s the deal. Losing a hard drive sucks big huge donkey balls. You don’t want to experience it. You don’t want to have to explain to your family why there will never be any pictures or home videos from the years 2002-2004 because you were lazy or cheap, but mostly lazy.
What’s that? You have an external hard drive? Okay, that’s cool. That’s a start. But I bet it’s sitting right next to your computer. So, what happens when mother nature pays a visit, or your kid sets the cat on fire and he runs into the Christmas tree and your house burns down? You lose your main hard drive and your backup. Which means that local back is just NOT ENOUGH.
I get it. There are lots of options for online backup. There are too many things to choose from. You don’t know how to get started.
Let me simplify it for you.
Go get Dropbox if you don’t already have it. Now. No, really, right now. Then, tell your friends and family. You know how much space I got for free from Dropbox? 17GB. Yes, 17GB! But even if you don’t accidentally send your invite code to your entire frickin’ address book, you’ll still get 2Gb for free. That’s a ridiculous amount of free online, synced storage. Maybe not enough for your entire photo collection, but it’s perfect for important documents, business files, etc. Still haven’t signed up? WTF!?
Ok, now that we’ve got Dropbox covered, what about your photo library, or, perhaps, your music library? Enter CrashPlan.
$60 a year. That’s it. For unlimited online backup. Yes, unlimited. Now, you shouldn’t go backing up everything, but even if you’re super lazy and didn’t want to selectively backup, CrashPlan can handle that.
Too cheap for $60 a year? Really? Fine. You write a comment or email me with a very good reason you can’t afford CrashPlan and I’ll fucking gift you a year. Why? Because I don’t want you to be the poor sap who has to explain why you have no photos of your dad’s worst Christmas sweater ever, or how you lost that video of your awesome dance moves at your wedding. Okay, maybe that last one is one reason NOT to backup.
Go. Now. Dropbox and CrashPlan.
Boom. Done. You’re welcome.
P.S. Scared of “the cloud”? I’d be more scared of me coming over and finding out you don’t have online backup. Ok. For reals, if you’re scared, let me know and we’ll set up another form of offsite backup.
Hi Brian,
You’re absolutely right – without an online backup you’re prone to lose all your precious data. I can’t tell how many times I’ve told my friends and family to finally dump their external hard drive and go for the cloud. Backblaze and Crashplan are great options, though I prefer Backblaze because Crashplan tends to have slower upload speeds.
Thanks again for your wake up call and I’ll foward this article to everyone who is still doubting!