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Today most of us have genealogical data on some computer system.
Ask yourself: is my data on say Ancestry's server or my hard drive. Do you even know where it is?
Hard drives fail. It is a fact of life. Even as a computer professional, I have lost data when my hard drives have failed. I was not diligent.
Make certain you have your important (that means genealogical) data on a disk even if you don't do full system backup on a schedule.
Also remember that backups do not save software (the programs) so save all of those annoying CDs you get when you purchase software.
Several years ago I had a major hard drive crash. My drive was only 18 months old. I buy 'top of the line'. I mistakenly called a 'help desk' as they were giving me useless help, I was madly saving data. I was running out of CDs. I had to make a decision what to save.
I lost 2 years of teaching materials (computer courses) as I ran out of Cds. But I had hard copies.
I have been using a computer in my home for almost 30 years. I have had 2 hard drive crashes in 5 years. Before that I never had a hard drive failure.
Make certain you alway print out (hard copy) your data or put it on a secondary storage device. Secondary storage devices also fail. Don't you love it? My solution is to always make certain one or two people also have my data.
And they said the computer would make a 'paperless society.' I have more paper than ever.
Warning: if your hard drive (that big box) starts making a grinding or 'rrrr' sound that means it is about to fail. Save whatever is important to you. I have always had warning but I just ignored it and I should have known better.
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