While Hans is having troubles with his uppity employes, I am enjoying myself with re-installing my operating system and all the pleasurable experiences that go along with it. Involuntarily, I might add. Curse you, virus writers!!! Anyway, let me use this opportunity for a public service announcement: Make a backup of all your important stuff! Now! I know I am very happy that I more or less regularily did that!
Stef, there is one simple answer to that – cloud storage!
I hate to be a schill for a company, but my wife uses Carbonite to auto backup her files. Restoration is also easy and quick. Fabo is right.
Everything gets saved to a thumb drive. The important stuff gets copied to a second. I’ve had to switch computers twice in the last year; I just bring everything with me.
Thanks everybody for the tips! I think a thumb drive is many times too small for my backup needs, but the carbonite thing (does it really have unlimited GB?!) looks interesting! Although it’s limited to one computer, and I have my stuff on two… Well, I’ll look into it!
Cloud storage is nice to have, but it isn’t an end all be all backup solution; your password could be stolen or socially engineered, just ask Mat Honan.
You still need some form of offline backup. I’m still a fan of (multiple) external USB hard drives, combined with FreeFileSync. (A free, open source file sync utility that’s replaced SyncToy after it began causing issues with my large file libraries)
Even better if you can have some sort of off-site rotation in place to protect against disasters like fires or floods.
If you have an option, try Linux. I have been using Ubuntu for the past few years, and I haven’t had any problems with it crashing, or getting viruses etc.