You know “the curse” I have been talking about? Well it hit again. Due to all of the craziness and lack of time in general plus time lost to the craziness and need to do things over and over, I had not backed up my main computer or my work laptop (the old one, not this new one which is still being slowly fed software) for the last quarter of 2018 - which I would normally have done around January 15 - nor did I do a monthly backup for December either. So last Friday I decided to do both. I backed up one computer to the quarterly hard drive and the other to the monthly hard drive at the same time. All went well. I also backed up my calendar, client who I have a separate flash drive for, and my data to each. All went fine. Saturday we were home as there was to be rain so I backed up each of the computers etc to the opposite drive. Still all okay.
I then went to back up for the week. I have a flash drive which holds 6 weeks of data, client, ad calendar files. I update the oldest one each week. This week if the data drive went bad and both of the regular “every session alternately” backups went bad I will have data from a week ago to work with. I back up with a software program that updates the files already in the file I am updating to. It finished running while we were out having dinner on Saturday.
When we got home the backup file did not show everything as finished. There were problems with several older tax client files - this is pdf copies of the returns, info used from the clients and my work papers. When I opened those files - it was all gibberish. Husband looked at them and told me that the drive had gone bad and the files were corrupted.
I did not panic - I have backups and they must be right as the backup program had not had a problem when making them. The back up from Saturday afternoon had the same corrupted files. I should say that, luckily, I had not gotten around to do any actual work on the computer for a couple of days - checked email, updated calendar, started one letter. I tried the backup from Friday and it was fine - whew!!
Husband tried to format the bad drive and it could not be done. So he broke it with a hammer to dust and threw out the dust. (Security is important when financial records are involved.) I had a new, larger flash drive and copied the backup from the day before to that drive. Husband suggested I use all new drives and change them annually from now on. I also have an archive drive - I will soon copy my 2018 files into my archive and remove them from the data drive I use to keep it more compact. Robert suggested that I get a new archive drive also. When I update the archive drive I also make 2 DVDs of it - one goes into my regular disk box and one goes into my “grab and go” accordion folder. This holds copies of our house and car titles, stock certificates, last month’s reconciled bank statements, wedding licenses (we actually have 3 - one government, one from each of our religions), medical insurance and the like. In case of an emergency we can grab this folder and have copies of our important papers to take with us - including DVDs of the archive and of my monthly backup to take offsite.
So I planned to go on Monday to a MicroCenter - a location of the chain and buy 3 new flash drives - one each for the session backups and a larger one for the archive. However, while at Costco on Sunday, husband noticed that my laptop dropped $50 in price since we bought it, so Monday we forgot about buying the new drives and went to back to Costco as they will refund the difference with the receipt. (This is a actually a very good idea. I could have returned the laptop and bought it again to take advantage of the price drop, and they would be stuck with a used laptop, this way I keep my laptop, am happy to get the lower price, and they don’t have to deal with a used laptop - and extra credit card fees for a return and another purchase.)
So yesterday, Tuesday, we bought the new drives. I made two new regular backups yesterday of data, client, and calendar files. I still have to check the hard drive backups and make a weekly backup for last week - though at this point, I will probably not bother and just do this week’s weekly backup on Friday. I also still have to copy the archive to the new drive.
I feel as if I am not getting anything done. I generally can tell how much I have been getting done by the number of papers I have to file at the end of a week, the number of items I have to mail out, and how deep the dust is in the house (okay, there is always too much dust in the house).
I have not finished client’s tax return yet - due March 15 - and need to have it finished and go to her with it before then. I have not heard from my other clients yet - they tend to contact me in March. I am still trying to get missing papers for our personal returns - one corrected IRA 1099 has not come yet - called yesterday about it - to be sent to us. I also have not received a corrected summary statement - but that is for something later this year. I did not get a dividend 1099 either, called up and I am not sure one was sent as the first thing the computer talked about was how much our dividends were and that we don’t need a 1099, but if we want one, they can send “a replacement”. So hopefully that will come soon. I know the amounts for all of these and can do the return without them, but need the paperwork for the same thing later in the year. We have two business returns to do for ourselves. One is due March 15 also and has no income - it is inactive, but we don’t want to close it down. So yesterday, just to get something done I did the inactive company’s tax returns. Well, something is done at least.
And - husband is thinking about going to a woodworking show out of state this weekend - which means Friday as we have the annual party for our reenactment unit on Sunday so we cannot go then and we cannot get up early enough to do that on Sunday and go to the woodworking show on Saturday. We will see. This was a nice show, but the venue it was in was closed and it moved to one that is not at all convenient to deal with. (A quilt show at the same old venue moved elsewhere and was awful and is no more.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
BACK UP! No, not away from the computer. Make sure that you are doing backups of at least important data and things like your important photos. We don’t use “the cloud” for anything including backup as another name for the cloud is “someone else’s hard drive, which is more attractive to hack than yours as they will get so much more” and most of the cloud drives have been hacked. An external hard drive is fairly reasonable to get and one can back up to it on a weekly or monthly basis if they don’t need to back up as often I do. (Remember a lot of this is work stuff I am backing up.) An external drive would also let you take the drive with you in an emergency.
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