Another step closer to secure data!

Living in an apartment, news stories about fire give me pause.

Stories about floods & other disasters also make me queasy.

Back in my Week 13 update I shared a bit about my frustrations in backing up my computer to IDrive.  This morning I finally finished backing up my entire iMac to IDrive. Earlier in the week I also finished linking my Ancestry trees to Family Tree Maker and then saved those GEDCOM files to Dropbox (it was just easier than IDrive because FTM has a Dropbox option).

I feel really good about this, it definitely makes me feel better about my data.

As Thomas MacEntee does and suggested for the rest of us during the Do-Over, I am working towards following the 3-2-1 Rule:

3 copies of each file

I now have 2 copies of all of my files, 1 on my iMac and 1 on IDrive. For some files, mostly photos, I actually have 3 copies already because of my files on Dropbox. When I buy that external drive, I will have the 3 copies of each.

2 different media formats

Again, I have this covered; computer and cloud storage.

1 off-site copy

I already have one and I am considering copying everything I can to a thumb drive and giving it to my mother. This is harder to keep up-to-date, though.

As for the issues I encountered with IDrive, I will have to investigate further at some point to find out if the issues I was having were related to my internet service, my computer or IDrive. I know at least some of the issues were at IDrive because they told me so when I called them a couple of weeks ago. They had been working on the server that holds my account and I was unable to sign in for an entire weekend. That doesn't sound great to me, frankly. If I had suffered a computer catastrophe and needed access to my data, I would not want to hear that. Also, if you are an IDrive user and ever need to contact customer support, make sure you have some free time. I waited a good ten minutes to speak to a live human. None of this has impressed me but I am paid for a year, so I will stick with it for now and be very happy when I have an external drive.

I still have yet to get back to my research plan although I have done some exploring this week.

Be back soon with the search for my great-grandfather, George Robert Smith's, birth records.