This is Hagar. It is a 32 Gig thumb drive which stores all of our important stuff. Ginny has a similar one named Helga. So what is this all about. Back in the dark ages of personal computers we kept all our "stuff" on the hard drive. At the time it included all the emails, financial data, etc. Then one day it went TU. We lost all our "stuff." Of course we didn't have a workable back up but I had a bunch of the stuff on floppy disks. At the time I was trying to find a useful backup method. I experimented with tapes and with burning a cd every once in a while. The tape systems at the time were not reliable. I spent lots of money and never got one that actually worked.

So we decided to see what we could do and come up with a better plan. First of all we started using the web based email systems. It was roadrunner at the time which morphed into comcast. We set up the email so that nothing got downloaded and it all stayed on the web. This was actually a much better solution because now all the email was accessible from any computer.

Step two was to set up Hagar and Helga. This was a snap. I gathered all the important stuff that I could find. TurboTax was one important thing. All sorts of important records were included. I also collected whatever ancient files I could find as a sort of historical archive.

As far as photos are concerned, when we went digital and started scanning old family photos, I got a big external drive and used it exclusively for photography. I keep the Lightroom catalog on it so I can use it on any machine. That works well.

So what about backing stuff up? I use external drives for that. I have an NAS (network attached storage) and two big external drives. One of the external drives is kept in our safe deposit bax and I regularly rotate it with the one on my desk top.

My practice is to back up everything every day. Ginny does the same. That has been made easy because of ViceVersaPRO software. When I discovered it many years ago, I knew I had the answer to the maiden's prayer. Now I have a very robust and easy to use data protocol. It has several operating modes, but I just use the mirror source to target. That way the backup is an exact copy of the source and can be accessed whenever needed.

One last bit. I DO NOT USE the "cloud." I tried using it with my iPhone photos and found that it mangled the image files. Microsoft keeps pushing OneDrive. I have disabled it (I think.) It gives me comfort that I have complete control of all my data and backups. If one of our computers ever bites the dust in the future, the only challenge will be loading software on the new computer because all the data is safe and in plug and play condition.