Stupid Mistakes Part 1: 2011 Edition
Please, learn from our screw up here…
Today I wanted to change it up a bit and talk about a big screw up that both Mike and I made (two separate situations) and what we did to fix it – hopefully you can relate.
Some things are just so easy to fix that you’re an idiot not to! Now, don’t worry, I’m not calling YOU an idiot but rather myself (I’m a bit self-deprecating that way, but hey, if the shoe fits… LOL). Technology has really made our lives a lot easier in many ways, but we still have to take that critical step and USE IT (that’s where the human error comes in)!
So, here’s what happened…
First a little background. I love photography – have even dabbled in it professionally a bit – but in the end I didn’t want “making money” to ruin my love for it so I just do it as a hobby. I have some very nice equipment – over $15k worth – and I take tons of photos. My library has around 50,000+ photos in it.
Anyway, back to the story… Well, obviously 50,000 images takes up a ton of hard drive space – 100′s of gigabytes in fact since they are high end photos and are not just JPEGs but also RAW images.
And therein lies my problem…
In a single week of 2011 I managed to lose 3 hard drives! Yeah, I know, sounds unbelievable but I had 3 separate hard drives all crash within a week and I lost hundreds of photos. I had a pretty good backup solution – manually redundant copies across a couple of hard drives and figured, hey, what’s the likelihood that two hard drives will die at once? (still don’t know the odds on that, but hey, like they say, odds only count when you’re on the losing side of the equation)
Well… not only did two hard drives die but as I backed up what I could from one of the dying drives (I could still access some of it) to a 3rd drive, well, 2 days later, that 3rd drive died too! So even the little I had *thought* I had managed to save was lost too!
But what about the business?
Now before you ask me, “what the heck does this have to do with business?”, let me say this. I lost a lot of business files as well. Several hours of recordings, etc… but not too much because most of it (the finished versions anyway) were up on our S3 server account, etc… I did, however, lose most all of the source files. But the fact is, that all of that stuff is not so hard to replace. Sure it takes some hours and some work, but it’s not irreplaceable like many of the photos I lost – that is something I can never get back and never recreate those moments.
The bottom line? This cost me (in lost time and direct business costs) about $1400 to the business and the cost to me on the personal side was, well, not really quantifiable, but I can tell you I’d willingly pay $2k right now to get those photos back! And it all could have been prevented for about $5 a month…
And then there was Mike…
Yeah, the misery wasn’t just handed out to me! Mike had three – count them, 1, 2, 3 – laptop failures in 2011!
He purchased a new i7 laptop and within 3 months he shattered the screen by carrying it around holding the screen (yup, looks like I’m not the *only* idiot in the bunch). So while getting his laptop fixed, he went out and purchased a new laptop to use as a temporary.
The good news? He was quite a bit smarter than me and was using an online file storage solution to automatically backup his entire computer – everything!
During that time he simply accessed his files from MyPCBackup and didn’t miss a beat. And would you believe that not only two weeks into using his new (2nd) laptop he again shattered the screen? Seriously guys, this stuff would be funny if it weren’t true – I mean, I really *wish* it were comedy instead of the truth…
Now he swears he wasn’t holding it by the screen – but I am not buying it (LOL)! Now he was down two laptops, and had to purchase a third. Again he accessed all his files from MyPCBackup. When he received his original 17 inch notebook back a couple weeks later, he was able to start using that again.
And what happened to the two extra laptops that Mike purchased? Well he fixed the one, and his lucky kids received a couple of early Christmas presents!
The point of all of this?
It’s simple – I’m an idiot! LOL… There are tons of cheap online file storage solutions out there, but Mike got it right – MyPCBackup file storage is the one to get for a variety of reasons:
- It has PC & Mac support (Linux too coming in January)
- It has UNLIMITED storage! Most of these companies charge you a ton for extra storage
- It’s just $4.95 a month – ridiculously cheap
- Plus tons of other features – click here to check them out yourself!
P.S. I’m now backing up with MyPCBackup automatically everyday and all of the photos are safe and secure… I’m still an idiot sometimes though… LOL So don’t make the same mistake! Get all of your business and personal documents backed up and just put it on autopilot so you remove the biggest element for failure – YOU! I certainly should have…
P.P.S That is our affiliate link above, but not the reason we are writing this post. If you have been following us for a while you know we only endorse and review products we actually use and like. And MyPCBackup is a product that saved both of our butts and we feel that anyone doing business online should have a backup solution of some sort because as they say $#@^ happens. Make sure to leave us a comment below and tell us your “stupid mistake of 2011″…
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About Troy
Troy Broussard is avvid writer, owner of ArticlesOnTap.com, a regular contributor to sites such as TopMarketingStrategies.com and ArticleSubmissionReview.com. Troy also enjoys creating information products and is a regular speaker at many Internet marketing events. Check him out at Google+ for other work.
On February 7, 2012 Jon wrote:
Nice post, couldn’t agree more! I used Backblaze and it took ages to back my system up due to my connection but one week after it had backed it up I got hit by some kind of virus and it wiped everything from my computer!
Luckily I had my info back within a few days! Paying $5 a month is a no brainer.
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
Hi Jon,
Thanks for stopping by… Virus’ can be a HUGE time waste and extremely costly to your business for sure.
Take care,
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Jack wrote:
Great post. Definitely important to have automated offsite back-ups. I’ve been using Mozy for a couple of years. It’s $5.99 a month. They also have a great iPhone app that you can access all your backed up files on your phone and gives you the option to email it, publish to Facebook, add pictures to your phone’s camera roll.
On February 7, 2012 admin wrote:
Hey Jack,
Mozy is one of the services I have NOT tried yet. I used Livedrive for a while, but access to their service was down so much, I couldn’t take it. We used Sugarsync for quite some time, in fact we still have a Sugarsync account for a couple of our employees – but I wasn’t crazy about it for a few different reasons. We store files on Rackspace, we store files on Amazon S3 – but MyPCBackup was a no brainer simple one for the laptop and I have been pretty happy with it thus far! But regardless of which service you like or use – use one of them!
- Mike
On February 7, 2012 Megan wrote:
Hi Troy, Losing data is the pits! Especially photos. Dropbox is great to share and store files with clients and JungleDisk is another for backing up bigger chunks of data for personal and business use.
On February 7, 2012 Anne wrote:
Hi Troy, didn’t know you liked photography. Me too, I have a very good equipment and love to take pics.
. You’re right, we should all be doing online back ups. I will do it before my 2-year old starts opening the PC to see how this thing works 
I do have a great back-up solution: my husband; he is a hard drive expert
On February 7, 2012 Ian wrote:
Hi Troy, good info thanks.
Might have to consider off-site backups as well.
Is that price per computer?
How does this service compare to dropbox?
Dropbox costs more it seems, but I only use it a little bit (not complete backup) so on the free version at present.
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@Ian
Dropbox is more widely used, but is much more expensive. This service is unlimited storage – whereas DropBox hits you up with additional charges as you grow, etc… They have upgrades to it that are really affordable to add additional computers. I’m not sure of the exact amount, but it’s way cheaper than a full subscription. I have my desktop and my notebook both on it as the upgrade fee was pretty minimal.
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@Anne
Hi Anne, yeah Photography is really one of two of my true passions… #1 being flying (I’m a private pilot)…
Yeah, like I said in the story, I always did local redundant backups until this past year… Now I still do that (‘cuz it’s local and faster) but I throw everything into online as well…
Thanks for the comment luv!
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@Megan
Yeah, have looked at both of those and they each have their advantage, but when it comes to unlimited storage you really can’t beat MyPcBackup… I do like DropBox, but it runs out of space quickly and gets expensive.
Thanks for stopping by!
-Troy
On February 7, 2012 Troy wrote:
@Jack
Thanks for the feedback Jack… I used to use Mozy awhile ago (a couple years ago) and had some issues and ended up going away from them. Then, stupid of me, never got a replacement… When I did look again, it just seemed like they didn’t offer some of the features I was looking for… but I know they are good too…
-Troy
On February 9, 2012 Ray wrote:
Good post Troy, thanks.
Although I run two quite separate backups on different discs I now still feel vulnerable!! The flames in your video registered.
I’ve paid my £72 and made my first two backups, ran smoothly but takes a while even on broadband.
There are some issues that I would like to share.
The default ONLY backs up My Documents. For me this was 1GB and 4 hours. It is not immediately apparent from their website or instructions that the default does NOT back up My Pictures (Troy’s problem)nor MY Music nor emails. Emails are crucial to my business and personal affairs.
Then reran backup with My Pictures, My Music enabled. 24 hours and now up to 7GB but still no email backup.
I’ve had multiple contacts with their support on how to back up emails – helpful and prompt. The problem is that the email pst folder is buried deep in the Vista/Outlook file structure and is not apparent to a non-techie like me. With help from support I’m now running that backup for a 4GB email folder.
I’ve suggsted to their support that these issues really do need to be brought out very clearly on their website and on instructions, and the defaults changed. Their response was:-
“We are unable to backup all data by default as some users might have lots of data which they might not want backed up. We do include the Documents folder by default as most of the important files are usually saved here.”
I wonder – am I the only one who has a mass of important business and personal files(with very little music and no video/films) in places other than My Documents (1GB of 11 total)? Their default wouldn’t have helped Troy!!
I’m interested in views. Am I missing an important understanding?
Thanks and regards