Byte Me! (& all hail Mozy)

As a digital scrapbooker my worst fear is losing all of my pictures and pages, so I have some backups in place.

1. Since my laptop is incredibly slow, I've moved all of my files to an external hard drive that I keep plugged in all the time.
   
2. All of those files are also backed up onto another EHD that I keep plugged into my desktop.
   
3. In addition to uploading all of my "keeper" photos and scrapbook creations to Shutterfly
   
4. I also backup everything offsite, online to Mozy to keep all of my metadata intact as well.
   

Overkill, you say? I think not. Let me tell you a little story about a cozy recliner and a clumsy ox. I normally scrap in my living room in a recliner. I'm able to be in the middle of everything – checking to make sure my son is doing his homework, that my daughter is reading, that dinner isn't boiling over and still be near enough so my husband feels like I'm 'watching' TV with him. So… back to said cozy recliner. The other day as I went to check on the progress of saving a file that was taking so long that I got up to walk away, I went to sit back down to get another file started and I stumbled. Now I'm not what most people would call "light on my feet" if you catch my drift. And, I stumbled and plopped very dramatically into my recliner landing ever so precariously on my laptop and EHD. So, I'm sure you can imagine what happened next – I retrieved my EHD from places it never should have seen (for those of you who have watched Mel Brooks' History of the World, imagine Dom Deluise saying "Here, wash this" and you'll get the picture, the rest of you will just have to use your imagination). The connector that plugs into the EHD was now bent and will not re-seat into the drive. So remember the part about moving ALL my data off my hard drive onto the EHD, well you can imagine my dismay. So I figure, no worries, I just backed everything up a week ago to my other EHD, so I'll just plug that in. Well apparently when my ever so delicate derrière plopped into the recliner I must've done something to my laptop as well, because now none of the USB ports recognize anything. So onto Plan C – enter Mozy – I have everything backed up on Mozy and am currently in the process of downloading everything that I previously uploaded for protection. So although it's taking a chunk of time, it's free, I don't have to buy a new hard drive or pay the Geek Squad $150 to transfer all of my data. I just have to be patient – so I'm still being tested after all, but at least ALL my stuff isn't gone. Although I did explode into expletives over the 5 hours I spent working on a Christmas gift that afternoon that hadn't been backed up anywhere just yet so that's gone, but it's still a relatively small price to pay considering the alternative. So EHD Byte Me! And thank you Mozy for saving what my butt ruined J