Traditionally, people used to store the addresses of their friends and family in a telephone diary. This good old telephone diary has lost its charm since the advent of the Internet. I cannot remember the last time I even looked at my aging and worn out telephone diary. In fact, I don't think I even know if I have misplaced it.



Honestly, it does not even matter because I have all the addresses and the telephone numbers on my Outlook address book. However, hell will break lose if I somehow happen to lose my address book.

Data I Absolutely Cannot Do Without

There are certain types of data that you do not care much for. I would not mind losing my music files. Even though I am an ardent music lover, I can do without my music files. However, there are certain data that I am extremely possessive about. I constantly keep checking that this data is fine and my computer is protected so as to protect the data. Following are the five types of data that I backup regularly.

• Personal Diary


Yes, like most of the dreamers and achievers out there, I too maintain a personal diary. This diary has the details about my innermost feelings, achievements, special moments, happy moments and the not-so-happy moments. Every time I go back to read the diary I discover something new about myself. It is absolutely amazing to read what I felt about something a year or two years back.

Sometimes reading my diary helps me realise how I have matured and sometimes it makes me realise that happy and sad moments go hand-in-hand in life. Reading my diary is also my favourite way to cheer myself up. Therefore, I make sure that I backup the data on my personal diary regularly. The time taken to backup my personal diary is worth it because if I ever lose the data, I will never be able to live those special memories and moments over and over again. I regularly backup my personal diary on my USB drive.


• Important Letters


My special mails are extremely important to me. While official correspondence via mails contains appreciation mails for my work, my personal mails are fun to read again and again because they bring a smile to my face. Then of course, there are the fights, the resolutions, love poems, and special wishes. Mails containing each of these elements hold a special place in my heart because of each of these mails correspond to a certain phase of my life.

Losing these letters, to me, would mean that I would never be able to rediscover my life. Therefore, I make sure that all my important mails are regularly backed up. I make sure that I mail my important mails to an alternate email address so that even if an error occurs on my primary mail, my important mails are safe.


• Travel Photographs


Family vacations and the memories associated with it are precious to me. I go to great lengths to capture each moment of fun and serenity while we vacation together. Therefore, these pictures are of high emotional value. Losing these pictures would mean losing the entire vacation and the memories associated with it.

I love looking at the travel photographs again and again to relive the moments. Therefore, while I may vacation only once a year with my family, I tend to relive that vacation almost every week! I backup my travel photographs at least once a week. My favourite backup device for this is a USB drive. I even have an alternate backup plan for my photographs. I tend to zip all the pictures and mail them to myself so that even if my USB drive fails, my photographs are still intact.


• Video Files


Special videos capture not just the moments but also the mood, ambience, sounds, and the mood. I am personally very attached to some of my video files. I tend to burn two extra DVDs of my video files and check them on a regular basis to ensure that they are still working fine.


• Personal Accounts


If you are one of those people who file their taxes online, you will know how much important the electronic records associated with it are. Since I need to keep a record of all the taxes that I paid online, I tend to maintain a separate personal accounts folder which has all my annual bank statements, salary slips, and tax records. Losing this data will surely spell disaster. Therefore, I tend to backup this data regularly on a USB drive. Since this data is so crucial, I tend to store the data on two separate USB drives so that I have a backup of my backup.