Backup to School

So you sent your child off to college at the Citadel, College-of-Charleston, Charleston Southern, etc., with a brand-new computer. You did send them with an external hard drive for backup, right? Probably not. I know because I'm the one who gets their panicked calls after it's too late.

Do yourself and your child favor and get them a backup drive right now. Here's a great Western Digital external hard drive that can backup any laptop, and it's not too expensive. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now that you have taken care of that, make sure they use it.

For Windows users, that drive has built-in software that will automate their backup. They just need to read the directions and make sure they plug it in — often.

For Mac users, of Macs within the past three years, they just need to plug-in the drive. The computer will automatically ask them if they wish to use the drive for backup. Confirm that, and they're good to go.

I recommend plugging-in the backup drive every time they have it at their desk in their room. I also recommend leaving it plugged in overnight — all that music and video can take its time backing-up.

Lastly, I recommend that they set their system sleep settings to leave their computer on when it is plugged in to power. This is so the computer won't go to sleep while backing up. But they should set it to turn off the display after a period of disuse, say 15 minutes. Windows users will find this setting under Control Panel Items > Power Options; Mac users find this under System Preferences > Energy Saver.

And, if the worst should happen, and their computer won't boot up, or they lose data, please call me, Bill Read at (843)722-7607, ext. 2. I may not be able to fix the computer or recover the drive, but I can assess the severity of the problem, fix it if possible, or direct them to a suitable data recovery company. The last thing they should do at this point is trust their data recovery to someone who might do more harm than good.