You’ve got a year supply of wheat, but is your computer backed up?
David March 25th, 2008
Those LDS Church members who have been following the counsel of their Church leaders may very likely have a large supply of wheat and other essentials for use in an emergency or lean times. The scripture, “…if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear.” (D&C 38:30) comes to mind as one that motivates people to actually do something as significant as a year supply of food for their families.
In just the last few weeks, there have been world trends that further validate the value in being prepared.
What’s Driving Up Grocery Prices? (NPR, March 11, 2008)
Buying wheat now takes a lot more ‘bread’ (Deseret News, March 15, 2008)
That said, what about including technology needs in your preparedness list? If you had a gas leak in your house and you had only moments to grab a few irreplaceable items what would you take? I have heard consistently from victims of the hurricane Katrina about all the family photos they lost and can’t replace. What if you knew that all of your important data (including digital family photos) was backed up securely in another location. Wouldn’t that give you a huge peace of mind?
Just last week, I was chatting with my sister. The hard drive on her PC crashed and she lost over two years worth of digital photos. Yeah, she didn’t lose her whole house in a fire or flood, but emotionally she lost a piece of her identity and the special memories she shared with her spouse and children. I’m not going to go into all of the reasons or methods for backing up your computer data, but here are a few straightforward options to consider.
- Keep data organized on your hard drive and burn a CD or DVD of critical content regularly. Take an older copy of this disc to the house of a friend or family member for safekeeping. (Having copies of your confidential data floating around isn’t the most secure option.)
- Purchase an external hard drive. There are a number of backup software utilities available that will automatically create a backup of all files in the event of a hardware failure. (This won’t help if you have a natural disaster)
Use an internet based backup service such as Mozy (free version). The software you download from this service will automatically backup your critical files to their servers in a secure encrypted format. (This option seems to have few down sides.)
There isn’t a one size fits all solution for including data recovery in your emergency preparedness plan, but there isn’t a standard solution for your food storage needs either. Let me know in the comments if you have found any other data backup strategies that have worked for you.
[…] in March, I had commented briefly about the rising costs of wheat and other commodities. From CNN this afternoon (April […]