Are your job files safely stored?

As court reporters, we are required to have our jobs available for backorders or reorders.  It is a relatively easy thing to do.  Have a regular backup schedule and stick to it!  But how many of us do this consistently?

I never delete job files.  If someone wants to order a job from 2005, I’ll be able to produce it.  Why not keep a client happy and earn income at the same time?

In addition to my regular backup schedule, every four months I do a full job-file backup.  This includes my Catalyst files and any work-related files, including audio and Outlook.  Every year I do a full hard drive backup.  Each of these backups is labelled on an external drive by date and description.

I don’t overwrite previous backups, but instead I create a new one.  This is to protect against potentially overwriting something that shouldn’t have been overwritten or even unknowingly replacing a perfectly good backup with one that could be corrupted, resulting in nothing being accessible.

I currently have four laptops that I have never wiped and six  external hard drives.  Even if one system fails, there are multiple places for me to check for a file.

And, just like an infomercial,  THAT’S NOT ALL!  I have not one, but TWO online backups running on a daily basis.  The initial backups took quite a while, as I usually have five years of jobs on my laptop at any given time.  Well, actually, on my current laptop I have everything since 2006.  But I digress.

Before or after the initial backup is done, you can set preferences for how and when to save your files.  I have my programs set for incremental backups any time my laptop has been idle for more than 10 minutes.  While I’m on my breaks, at any time of the day or night, my computer runs the online backup program to save any new files I may have.

External hard drives are very affordable, and every year you get more storage for less money.  A terabyte drive will hold your job files for years.

I personally use Carbonite and Mozy for online backup.  Each one costs approximately $60 per year.  The cost depends on what terms and/or features you sign up for.  This small amount ensures I can access my files from anywhere in the world.

Does this sound like overkill?  Ask yourself if you would have off-site retrievable files if, for example, you had a house fire or theft or a computer crash.  None of us expect the worst to happen, but sometimes it does.

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