The importance of protection

One thing every blogger needs to be aware of is the importance of protection. What kind of protection?

Anti Virus Protection

No bloggers machine should be without it!  Take part in blogging without anti virus protection and you could be asking for a whole host of trouble as your machine is hit with all kinds of virus, spammers and invisible forces that suck important information from you without you even knowing!

Nothing could be worse than losing your work because you blogged without protection! For a free anti virus solution try AVG Free. I have been using it for ages and recently upgraded (which is driving me a little crazy because messages pop up every few seconds!) but I was told by a PC technician that the free version is adequate.

Back up Protection

As if moving home over the last two weeks wasn’t work enough a few days ago my computer crashed. I turned it on and it gave me an error about Windows being unable to open (I have Vista.) I rang for help and they told me to restart it but warned me I will lose EVERYTHING on my C Drive – which I did!

The good news is most of what I type up – documents – are on my D drive and they are all still there but what I lost was all the software I have ever bought and I had to go back and reinstall it. For software older than 2 years I wasn’t able to get a link to redownload it and had to buy it again.

Luckily I have a 500 GB external hard drive (well worth the money when you work online because you buy so much stuff and you really don’t want to clog your computer with it) and quite a few of the .exe files for the software are on there.

It was still a lot of work having to reinstall it all and the only folder I will miss is one that contains details of a blog network I set up – I have an older version on my backup drive but not everything is there.

Using your hosting

If you don’t have the money to buy an external hard drive (and I encourage you to invest in a good one because I had a cheap one a couple of years ago that failed on me) at the very least you can backup by creating a folder on your hosting account and adding all your documents to that folder. If you lose everything on your PC at least you can download it again. Make sure you create a blank .html file (or create one that redirects to an affiliate website!) because if someone finds that folder on the internet you don’t want them to get access to all your stuff. I redirect people to Blog Success

You can also password protect it but I usually just create a  .html page that redirects and send them off to a product – you never know, they might end up buying something

Losing Roboform and itunes

A big frustration was losing all my details for Roboform which I have used for years and has login details for all those internet marketing products I have invested in over the years! There was no backup for that at all and so I am starting again. When I added my login details I was hoping that it might remember me but it didn’t! I am not sure if there is a backup system for roboform but I will certainly have to check that out.

I have also lost all the songs I added to and bought from itunes and am in the process of contacting both to see if there is anyway of getting this stuff back. My songs are on my ipod but of course like xsitepro itunes do not allow you to go from ipod to itunes (unless anyone knows a way!)

The biggest annoyance is the software xsitepro (I use it to set up minsites like http://www.confidencebuildingarticles.com/ ) because you can not download a site with the version I have (not sure if you can with the new version) but you can reinstall backups that you made and while I know I was regularly backing up I can’t find anything after Feb 2009. Which means I was either saving the backups on C drive or I have put them in some obsecure folder and just can’t remember right now! Or of course I really didn’t back up after Feb 2009 but I know that is impossible because its usually a monthly thing for me to do at the very least.

End result : That site will have to remain exactly as it is now or I have to start again and rebuild it!

The good news is within 24 hours I was back up and running – which isn’t too bad considering the amount I lost!

So I want to encourage you to go ahead and back up. It definitely has saved me a lot of heartache, I lost a little but it could have been a lot worse. The real blessing was the night before it happened I moved all my camtasia videos over from my computer to my external hard drive because Camtasia is in my C drive and I would have lost them all!

This is one of those tasks that you think you “don’t have time for” or that you will get round to doing and never do – but trust me, when you lose everything and you have nothing backed up – it will be your worst nightmare!

If you have a comment, suggestion, opinion or question about this blog post or you just want to say how it helped you please leave me a comment below.

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