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Thursday, August 18, 2011

My Ode to @BulldogBackup

After several years of backing up my computer about once a year maybe periodically, I decided to look into an online, automatic backup system. I stumbled across @BulldogBackup on Twitter and after checking out their website I signed up.

I am so glad that I did. Not only have they always been great to work with, but my computer died this week, taking my hard drive and thousands of pictures, songs, documents, history and dozens of other irreplaceable things with it. I tried to access the hard drive with my new computer... dead.

I would have hated to lose this picture
and about 12,000 or more like it. 
I cannot stress to you how important it is to get an online backup if you have digital pictures or other things on your computer that you wouldn't want to lose. In fact, earlier this week someone I follow on Twitter was very upset for just that reason - all her children's baby pictures were gone because her hard drive died.

I can already hear your excuses...

It's expensive... not really, Bulldog has very reasonable prices. Are your children's pictures worth $6.14 a month? Or $63.27 per year? I think so. And that's for unlimited space. Yes, you crazy picture-taking fool, unlimited.

It's hard to use... no, not at all. Yes, the initial backup took awhile, but the system allows you to throttle your upload and you can pause it if you need to and let it run overnight. Set up was a breeze and once you tell it what to back up, it automatically backs up new files and new revisions to existing documents. It even stores older versions. My system was backed up to right before it died - I didn't lose anything except the things I didn't tell it to backup (like my desktop - doh)

I backup on disk... that's great, but what if (God Forbid) your house were to burn down? Not only would your computer be gone, so would your backups. I think this thought alone was enough to convince me.

And the best part, their customer service is great. I was having problems today with restoring my files, so I emailed them. I got a response back almost immediately. They were very patient and helpful, and ultimately we got my issue resolved with very little hassle.

So seriously, get off your duff and get an online backup service. Do it now, don't wait until you have a problem. Some day you'll be so very thankful that you did it. I recommend Bulldog Backup.

Note: I'm not getting, or expecting, any perks for this post. It really is a great service, and deserves a "shout out" :)

4 comments:

  1. This sounds like a good deal. I might have to look into it. Thanks!

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  2. My DH used to be and IT guy, I am a 'end user' in every sense of the term. Is our relationship and it mostly works for us. The trouble is I have a really hard time (read: impossible time) to suggest technological anything. But I will forward this post as a causionary tale.

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  3. I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about losing my stuff. Perhaps I should back up. Know of a good service? :)
    Just kidding! Thanks for the recommendation. Seriously. I really need to do this. I used to be a picture taking fool, now not so much, but if I lost all my WIP's I'd lose my mind. Thanks!

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  4. It's so nice to read a post about backing things up from a non-IT person. I tout the amazingness of it regularly, but nobody listens. Hopefully coming from you, it will. Backups are so important!

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