Need help with Computer Crash.

[JDDavis]

5. No one is an angel when it comes to backing up.

The concept of a cloud is intimidating to many, but most are password protected, and all are encrypted.

The other option, a SSD stand-alone drive, while it sound secure, if your house or office burns to the ground, not much use.

Best option is to have yourself linked to a computer somewhere else, one that you know where it is, at home, at work, at your spouse's home/work, at your son's/daughter's home/work... a drive that you can connect to securely, on schedule, at about 12 1 am... send all files that have changed from the previous day to replace the same name files or create new files on the distant computer 5-100-2000 miles away from your computer.

Look for systems that can do that, learn to use flash drive devices for all your correspondence, all your photos, all your videos, all your lecture presentations, carry around one set of flash drives, interchange them for another set at home or at work, so you have two copies of flash drives with your data, one on your person, one at home or at work, both almost up-to-date, backed up at least weekly.

But the bottom line, your hard drive probably is NOT totally ruined, even if the boot tracks on it cannot get your computer to boot up anymore. The data is most likely there.

I have a relative who authors and publishes about 3 books every 5 years, does it all by writing on her computer, including the video clips, the photos, the on-line teachers' guides, etc. She backs up all her data once a week onto two identical 32 GB flash drives, and transfers over internet all new files from one computer to the other about every day, (home and work site). That way, she's only 3-6 days behind if both of her computers crash at once, only a day behind if only one of her computers crashes. She also has an editor who insists he have copies of her drafts and data and photos and video clips she is preparing for her next textbook, he gets a copy to his office in NYC once a week. Her email is on the cloud, through G-mail, always there, no matter how many emails, with attachments (now about 19,000 for the last 9 years), all searchable by any keyword, date, name, etc. in the email.

Consider your options carefully, if you have another few years in your career, a few hours invested in learning backup strategies, techniques, habits, etc., could save you years of work.