You can do everything right

..and things can still go badly.

A colleague had his laptop stolen from work this weekend; he stepped away during an event and came back to find it missing.  He had a backup drive so things should have been fine, but that got taken as well.  A year’s worth of music composition, photos and documents are gone.  But what could he have done differently?  It’s hard to say.  There is no simple answer.

I do know a few things that I’ve started doing:

• I don’t travel with my backup drive.  I leave that at home.  Right now it’s visible but I’m going to make it less so.
• I’m getting a second backup drive.  That’s going someplace else.
• I am organizing my files that I can’t live without and plan to store them online in my Drop Box (learn more)
• I’m looking into laptop anti-theft software.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

I can’t emphasize this enough: If you rely on your computer for your “life” – photos, music, work; Make sure you have a backup plan. You can do everything right and things can still go wrong.