I wanted to share with everyone something I learned from a real estate agent a few months ago during a GRI class I attended in Sarasota, Florida. I noticed that one of my fellow classmates had one of those cool new paper thin Apple laptops with a small box the size of a deck of cards attached to it. I had to go over and check out this great new laptop. After speaking with her I learned that she had recently gone through what she explained to be nothing short of a nightmare; her business laptop had been stolen! Replacing the stolen laptop is easily done, but replacing your customer data base, history of customer communications, tasks lists, calendar, emails, documents, spreadsheets, pictures, etc. may not be replaceable. It took her months and countless hours to restore her lost information. My classmate then gave me some valuable information that I took to heart. Store all of your information on a portable external hard drive.
A portable or external hard drive is quite a useful piece of equipment. It allows the user to back up or store important information separate from the main internal hard drive, which could become compromised by online or offline activities. Sensitive documents, large music files, DVD images, movies, disk images, and even a backup of the contents of your main internal hard drive, can all be kept securely and safely on an external hard drive. When you are online, you can even leave the external drive turned off.
Another advantage of an external hard drive is that it is portable and operates on a plug-and-play basis. Any computer with a USB will recognize the external hard drive as a storage device, and assign it a letter to designate it. The drive can then be accessed like a normal internal hard drive. It's a snap to transfer huge files back and forth from work to home, to a friend's house, or between your desktop and laptop. Just plug in the interface cable to quickly reconstruct a working environment, making your favorite programs virtually portable. You can even buy several external hard drives (storage capacity 40GB up to 750GB), using one for multimedia storage, one for imaging, one for backup, one for work and so on.
Also make sure that you password protect your laptop to prevent unauthorized access. You will be protecting the confidentiality of your customers, work product and any sensitive documents you may have stored on your hard drive.
Thank you to my friend in Englewood for your excellent advice!
Contact Kari A. Battaglia, GRI, Realtor®, Broker Associate, Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Licensed Realtor® in Florida at 941-270-1851 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Venice Florida, South Venice Florida, Englewood Florida, Nokomis Florida, Laurel Florida and for Tennessee real estate investments. I am currently accepting referrals.
Contact me by email at kari.battaglia@floridamoves.com. Need information fast, call me direct at 941-270-1851.
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Copyright © 2008 By Kari A. Battaglia. All Rights Reserved.
Serving customers in Venice Florida, South Venice, Osprey, Nokomis Florida, Casey Key, Manasota Key, Englewood Florida, Rotonda West and North Port communities. Call me to list your home for sale, answer questions regarding steps you can take to AVOID FORECLOSURE or answer any general questions you may have about real estate.
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Great suggestion.
Will check into this tomorrow.
Thanks, Kari !
Thanks for the great information. Can you use that for a regular PC too?
It makes sense I agree. what do they do with favorites and other things convenient to working efficiently?
To Russ from Michigan - Yes you can use a portable external hard drive for your regular PC too. Just plug into the USB and your computer will recognize drive as another storage drive.
I use mozy for my back-up, you can get 10mb's of free backup at mozy.com. A word of caution, do not lose your password because they don't keep it for security purposes.
You don't have to worry about losing the hard drive or if your house burns down you data is safe and can be re0installed on a new computer immediately.
To Michael from Miami Beach - the favorites can be saved on your external hard drive as well. Go to your computer icon, click on C drive, click on user, click on your name, and all of your personal files are there to copy and past to the external hard drive. Alot of the external hard drives come with software pre installed to back up your pc but I like to copy and paste what I need.
I use a database that syncs with two other computers via the internet. You can password protect the database also. If the laptop is ever stolen, you're good to go!
I also do that with my desktop, it sure helps in a crash also.
Very good reminder! I bet you just saved a bunch of people from the same nightmare!
AMEN .. I liked the nightmare .. and Now I keep a weekly back up ;; never again will I live that sinking feeling of EVERYTHING be sucked into the great blue screen
One can't have too many back-ups -- we all are likely less backed up that we all should be -- there is always room for one more.
Great post - Thanks for sharing such good information with us!
I just had to go through the process to recover files and get to an admin password -- an administrator had it that I couldn't access -- It is sooo easy to hack the password on a notebook that the best plan is to protect that system will all the care in the world -- people will be able to get to your information
Kari,
This is something I've thought about, but have not done anything yet. Thanks for posting.