If you are a writer, you are also the owner of your own business. You need to manage that business well. Part of good business management is to protect your important information.

There are many backup strategies you should use to keep your information safe. Google has many tools to help you accomplish this.

Google Documents is a great way to store files on the Internet. You can access them from any computer with an Internet connection. You can also share the files with others. This is great for editing and critiquing.

Gmail’s default of 7GB of space lets you save lots of documents as well as emails. Because of Google’s great search capability, I had most of my business in my Google accounts. And I was about to max out that 7GB storage.

When my account got hacked, I lost all access to those files and emails. After I convinced Google that I was indeed me, I was able to access my files once more.

All of the Google Docs file was there. However, my drafts, contacts, and inbox had been deleted.

I suspect the hacker wanted plenty of room to store any responses to his request for money in my name. Since he was forwarding all new messages, he received my emails even after access to my account was closed. However, if my account filled up, the emails would bounce back to the sender and would not be forwarded.

The account was my primary PayPal address (a REALLY bad idea). I had made that change a couple of weeks before. (Always direct your PayPal, Clickbank, and other vendor service email to a PAID email account.) My record of payments sent and received were lost. Of course, my PayPal account still contained that information.

My account also contained other business critical information. I rushed around madly trying to reconstruct all the important information I had lost.

Then I remembered a service I started using a couple of months ago, Backupify. It can backup your social network and Gmail messages. I had set it to backup my Gmail box.

When I looked in the archives, all my emails were there. I didn’t want to download all the messages. However, I was able to search through the archives to find the important messages I needed.

I also noticed that they’ve added Gmail contacts to the available backup list. Too bad I didn’t know about that before. It would be handy to be able to restore the contact list.

I posted on Twitter that Backupify had saved my emails. Someone from the company sent me a message to say that if I wanted a zip file of my emails, to ask them. I saw that zip files were on the planning list, but didn’t know they were available yet.

Someone else said they were able to retrieve all their direct messages from Twitter by using Backupify. This company is providing a needed service by backing up social networking files.

Backupify stores your data on the Amazon S3 data cloud. They offer 2GB of storage free and have a couple of paid plans.

Add Backupify to your list of backup providers.

What information would you miss if you lost your social network accounts? Leave me a comment and tell me what important information you can’t afford to lose.

Write on,

Lynn

Restoring a computer is a process of two steps forward and one step back.

I restored the HP today. I always say that I’m going to document the process and then either don’t or have the file saved on the computer that dies. Of course, I can retrieve the document from the onlive service, but I seem to drive right in. However, something different happens every time. › Continue reading…

I get to do another restore of the Acronis image again. This is at least the fifth time this year that the software has saved my data. I’d better make a new image of the Toshiba. If I have one, maybe I won’t need it.

The HP came back from the shop today. HP returned it a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been enjoying the cooler weather at the coast and didn’t want to come back. It’s 90 here now and suppose to get to 95 tomorrow. I’ll restore the image tomorrow.

Next I’ll need to shuffle files between the two computers. Online backup makes that easier, especially when one of the computers is in the shop. It really came in handy this time, since the HP died right after I prepared the income tax on it. I was able to retrieve files that I thought I might have lost. The HP died while I was traveling and didn’t always have a reliable internet connection. I wasn’t sure when the last backup completed before the computer died.

It use to be the most common problem was the failure of the hard drive. Put in another hard drive, restore the image, and you’re back in business. However, the last failure on both machines was the main board. Not as easily fixed.

Not only do you need a way to recover all your data, but you also need a way to keep working without a computer (or at least your main computer). I hope you don’t have to be without your computer as long as I have this year.

Use backup software, make copies on thumb drives, external drives or CDs, use Google, but back up your work!

Write On,
Lynn Jordan