So when did you last backup this machine?

Spoke to a friend of mine about his computer as it was behaving strangely and causing him to worry it was dying. We ran the basic checks and found little wrong other than a strange behaviour at system startup. As I was looking for all the obvious things, I missed one of the basics - PSU! It was screaming at me that this could be the issue, but I ignored it in my aloof fashion and explained we needed to first backup the disk before going any further.

"When did you last backup?" I asked. "Er, er, never?" came the reply!

So, for a while we sat in silence as my friend was embarrassed with this, and I just didn't know what to say. Here was a man who wanders the public houses of the world surrounded by IT people, listening to their stories of customer woe, silliness and embarrassment. On a regular basis he hears of data loss and system failure, of how businesses have been lost because someone forgot the backups - and he had never even done it once!!!!

I was stunned. Being the consummate professional though, I went through the options of what to purchase and how to sort and place data so it could be backed up simply and quickly. Only when I thought to write this article did I realise that I had not provided that magical item that would help him in his trek to perfection - I hadn't written and sent him the backup plan, process and purchase details!!
It just shows how easy it is to get mired in daily activities to such an extent that we put off essential jobs until it is sometimes too late. I'll be writing that document and finding the prices for my friend this week, and this time I'll be embarrassed that he didn't get it earlier.....

When did you last backup your machine?