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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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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Thank you for your information and hopefully you don't leave the little hard drive to get stolen.
Kari....another great idea is to use an online service, such as Carbonite. One of my clients told me about it, and it's been the best. Every time you save anything to your hard drive, it makes a copy, out there in never never land, where you can get it if you ever need it.
Imagine buying a new computer, and with a couple key strokes, you have everything on your new computer. I've had one crash and it was not fun, so glad I found this service. I had bought an external hard drive, was backing up, and then suddenly learned it was only backing up about 50% of my work! UGH!
But the small drive is cool too....gotta love technology!!
What a great idea! I would be out of my mind if I lost everything on my harddrive. It is priceless and I have started backing up stuff, I just need to get really serious about it. Maybe over the Thanksgiving Holiday I can take time to do it. Thanks for the reminder.
Tom & Ray, I have heard of services like Carbonite but never took the time to look into it. I am definitely going to check it out! I would be hating life if my computer crashed. Thanks for the tip.
Kari - After I had a hard drive failure I went out and got a external drive. Now I back up all my important information. I also backup my database on my SD card.
Nice tip, I hadn't thought of that. I do upload and store my memory with cards, but, I like the external hard drive better:)
It's a Good Life!
Fran
I used CARBONITE to back up my computer and it was definitely easy to use. Several months later, I lost a major file, over 4 GB of customer data. When I went to Carbonite to get it back, I found out they had not backed this particular file up because of its size. I retraced my steps and could find no signs that this information was ever asked of me. I AM NOT A FAN OF CARBONITE, THEY WON'T EVEN TALK TO ME ABOUT IT.