A Friendly Reminder From Jodi's Husband

sm_img_5012 Yes that’s right, I finally convinced my husband (Mike) to write a guest post for us. YAY! I am so grateful for how supportive he has been with watching the kids while I work on the blog, helping me film videos, and listening to me talk non-stop about FOOD STORAGE. But I never thought I could convince him to actually POST on the blog until he had his own personal “emergency”. Here is his story in his own words (he is writing about Mozy which is a service we recommend in our first BabySteps Checklist):

When Jodi first told me about Mozy I thought it was a great idea … for her. She could have her whole computer backed up online and it was only 5 bucks a month. She is a PC user and has had computer crashes in the past that wiped her whole hard drive clean, so I happily agreed to let her sign up for Mozy. She asked me if I wanted to sign up for it for my Macbook and I said no because I’ve never had any Mac crashes since I first got one in 1990.

Well about two weeks ago I was complaining to Jodi that my hard drive was almost full and it was driving me crazy. Once again she suggested I should get Mozy and back everything up so that I could clear it off of my computer. I still figured I was ok and just needed to do a clean install and I could just deal with it for now and do some backup DVDs sooner or later when I had time. You can probably tell where this story is going. A week ago, amid some frozen programs, I forced a reboot on the Macbook and it started back up, but just sat at a gray screen and wouldn’t do anything. None of my system install DVDs would load, and it just sat at that gray screen. About ten minutes of diagnostics in a Mac store found that my hard drive just wouldn’t boot. The computer was fine, but the hard drive itself had completely crashed. I lost everything!

Luckily for us, all of our family photos and videos were stored on Jodi’s computer. Unluckily for the company I work for, all of my work files were on that computer and were not backed up anywhere else. I do back up here and there on DVDs, but there were at least 50 GB of files that are now frozen neatly on a worthless chunk of metal in my closet. Needless to say I have learned my lesson.

Bottom line: even the mighty Mac can have a failure (even if it happens FAR FAR FAR less often than PCs, honey) and you really have to be on top of backing up your computer, whether it’s via an external hard drive, removable media, or something like Mozy. Jodi still enjoys reminding me of the fact that Macs apparently aren’t invincible after all.

-Mike

A note from Jodi: Even if your computer doesn’t “crash” it is still important to have it backed up online or outside of your home in case of a fire, flood, or other disaster that might destroy your computer completely. That’s why it is part of our Emergency Plan! If you are interested in using Mozy‘s service you can get 10% off an annual or two year subscription by typing in FSME as the referral code. And you better believe Julie is LOVING this “I told you so” as Mozy’s BIGGEST FAN … have you seen her LOVE STORY about them?