Lessons Learned the Hard Way

If you use a computer for business purposes, I cannot stress how incredibly important it is to back up your information on a regular basis. There are some great online programs that run in the background on your computer, some free, some for a small fee. I use the free version of Mozy which will back up 2GB for free. However, if you need additional storage capacity, you can pay $4.95 monthly for unlimited storage. Other online backup services are Xdrive and Carbonite, or you could also buy an external drive to backup your data to.

Whatever method you choose, make absolutely sure that every important file you need is being backed up. Do not assume that simply because it shows that it's backing up a particular folder that the entire contents of that folder and being saved.

I learned this lesson the hard way today when I somehow deleted my ShortKeys file. Don't ask me how I managed to do this, because I'm still not even sure. I thought I was safe because I have my files backed up nightly, but even though the folder that my file was saved in was being backed up, my actual ShortKeys file was not checked. That's over three years' worth of shortcuts I had entered that are now gone, gone, gone.

Thankfully I'm very lucky that Shaina and Mandi and I have all shared our lists from time to time because we use many similar shortcuts, so I'm sure with their help I can recreate it to some extent. But it's still not MY list, and it will take some time to build it back up to where it was. Just typing this short post has been extremely difficult for me, because they're so ingrained in my memory that I automatically type my shortcuts.

I hope that by posting this I can help at least one of our readers avoid a similar fate!