Day 15: Computer Back-Up (15 Minute Prepping Projects)

Welcome to DAY 15 of our 15 Minute Prepping Projects series. Today’s project will be to make sure we back up all of our important data from computers, phones, etc. You wouldn’t want to be stuck losing important and sentimental items.

Every day for the month of September we will celebrate National Preparedness Month by undertaking a small task to help us get more prepared. Do as few or as many days as you want. Jump in at any time. Do them out of order, or more than one in a day. And feel free to share what you are doing!

Click here and scroll to the bottom of the post to view all the past days’ projects.

If you’ve ever had a computer crash, or a cell phone get dropped in a swimming pool, or an external hard drive get knocked on the floor and broken … you know that sinking feeling that you are going to lose all your data. (And yes all three of those things HAVE happened to me, yikes!) There are several ways that you can back up important information and documents from your electronic devices.

Subscribe to a cloud service from your devices (with apple products you can backup all of your pictures and documents to iCloud). Google has some great options for online backup too with Google drive. Amazon Prime has some backup options as well. See what connects best with your phone/computer type and look into setting it up.
Have several external hard drives with your important documents on them and anything from your computers that aren’t uploaded to the cloud. (Keep one at home, preferably in a fireproof/waterproof safe and possibly one at an external location like a lockbox or a family member’s home)
Subscribe to an online backup service like Backblaze or Carbonite. These are services that will backup your entire computer automatically on a set schedule. I love the peace of mind that gives me in case I don’t get around to backing things up on my own very often.

Ideally you should have multiple backups of everything because you never know what type of emergency is going to happen (it can be as little as a drink spilling into your laptop keyboard or as big as an EMP shutting down the entire power grid). Take fifteen minutes today and just make sure to at least DO SOMETHING to work towards getting all your backups in place.

Share Your Results

I hope today is helpful for you. If you already have a good backup system in place make sure to let us know what YOU do by sharing! Here are some ways you can share:

Instagram: Use #15minuteprep and tag @jodi_foodstoragemadeeasy on any post or story you do featuring your project. You can follow the hashtag to see everyone’s projects and if you tag me I will repost in my stories throughout the day (if your account is public).

Facebook: Comment on the PINNED posts in my Facebook Group (If you are not a member yet I will try to get you added within 24 hours so you can play along). The most recent day should show up at the top and you can scroll to the right to see past days. I will try to share some of these to Facebook stories as well (no names will be used, don’t worry!)

Text me: If you are not already signed up to get the daily challenges via text just text 15minuteprep to 717-788-3663. You can always reply to the daily text with your “report” so I can check in on you.