Store It Foods

It wasn’t forecast, but we had a rather spectacular thunder and lightning show last night.  There wasn’t much rain, but there was lots of noise.  There was also a bit of a  power outage.  It didn’t last long, mere moments in fact, but it did last long enough to affect my computer.

Upon awakening this morning I found that it had been shut down.  Not having anticipated this storm, I had not taken the precaution of shutting down and unplugging. Mind you, with surge protectors, etc. you wouldn’t think that would be necessary.  Still, now it was off, and I worried a little when I had trouble turning it back on.  Fortunately, past experience in similar circumstances had revealed to me that my computer has a strange tendency of sometimes not paying attention to the on-off button on the front.  Instead, I have to go the power switch at the back, turn that off, wait a few seconds, and then turn it back on.  With a feeling of relief, I found that this had once again worked.

The problem was solved, but it served as a great reminder of the reason for which I had purchased a external hard drive.  What if I hadn’t been able to reactivate my machine?  What if the internal hard drive had somehow been corrupted?  What would I have done about all of those files and pictures in “My Documents”, “My Pictures” and “My Videos?”  There are some irrplaceable things there and I would hate to lose them.

That external hard drive, however, can be used for “backing up.”  Done frequently enough, I probably wouldn’t have lost much if the computer itself would have failed me.

So, do I advocate having some sort of an external storage device for your personal computer?  You bet I do.  I also advocate the following of advice provided by emergency preparedness experts, and having vital documents and files backed up onto a thumb drive or something similar that could be stored away from your home office.  In fact, it might be a good idea to have two or three copies made, with at least one being stored off site.

Yet, they too need to be kept current.  If time, circumstances and documents change, fresh copies need to be made.  We’re probably all aware of that, but doing it “when I get around to it,” or “when time permits” may not suffice when those emergencies strike — when you no longer can get around to it, or when time has run out.  Perhaps we need to make that time.  It could certainly translate into some peace of mind later on.