@nixCraft
"Always backup the backup of your backup."

I once had my laptop die WHILE I was copying one backup to a 2nd #backup. 🤯

"No problem!" I said, as I called all THREE of my long-distance brothers, to whom I had sent a copy of ALL my over-10,000 #Genealogy files (sorted & organized into lots of sub-sub-sub-directories).

Two had not kept any files, after browsing through the interesting family photos. 😥

The other one had kept the flash drive, so he mailed it back to me...

He had also deleted ALL the files.😱

"No problem," I said again. After all, I was married to a computer guy. Surely he could fix it...

Hubby ran a recovery program for 3 DAYS, but was only able to recover the photos and documents. ALL videos of interviews with dead relatives were unsalvagable.

To make matters worse, some files were still useless, I had many duplicates, and my directory structure was GONE

That was three YEARS ago. I'm still sorting the mess out.🤦‍♀️

#DataManagement #FileManagement #Backups

@geneapleau @nixCraft

My IT husband took me to the computer store soon after that and we set things up properly. I had been trying not to spend a lot of money (by using USB drives), but the experience convinced me that multiple trustworthy external hard drive backups are a sound investment, and that sufficient Cloud storage space is worth a small monthly fee.