by Dan Pinnington

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No doubt you have all made – or at least thought about making – a few New Year’s resolutions. Hopefully one of them is to make a backup of your data. You do have a backup – don’t you???

Now I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I know at least a few of you don’t backup of your data, or perhaps you have an older backup. If you are one of these people, make plans to backup your data now! It is critical to remember that for love, time or money, you can’t easily or cheaply recreate lost data. And a crashed hard drive usually means that this important and precious data is gone forever. Regardless of whether it is client files or other critical law firm documents, or on the personal side, family pictures or information, you don’t want this happening to you.

If you are backup newbie, read 7 Backup Strategies for Your Data, Multimedia, and System Files for some perspective on the different types of data you have and how often different types of data should be backed up.

This Lifehacker article, How to Back Up Your Computer, has great instructions for using the built-in backup utilities Windows and Mac OS X. How to Backup Your Data from PCWorld mentions some of the most widely used online backup tools.

And don’t forget all the data you have on your smartphone! This How to Backup any Smartphone article from Gizmodo will help you with this important task.

Make plans to get your backup done or updated ASAP. Figure out what you want to backup and how you are going to do it. Give yourself a deadline and make an appointment in your calendar to get it done. It will make you breathe easier and sleep more soundly. Happy New Year!