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Sydney Morning Herald

Monday September 8, 2008

Recently, my two-year-old laptop was stolen from my home. Fortunately, I had backed up the hard drive off-site a few days before, so the loss was not total. However, while the drive itself would be covered by my home and contents insurance, the data is not. Thus any iTunes files, downloaded programs or other intangible items are at risk. If you buy CDs and these are stolen, they are insured.

Let this be a lesson to everyone; continually back up (photos of my nine-month-old child an hour after he was born have been recovered) and all it cost was a $110 external hard drive.

As for other at-risk data, my only suggestion is multiple on-site and off-site backups. One at home to cover a crashed hard drive and one in the office to cover total loss.

Dion Christophoratos

Multiple backups are a good idea if you can manage it - although we suspect just having a backup at all would be a good start for most people. Congratulations on the letter of the week and enjoy your prize, a collection of seven DVDs from Universal Pictures, including Untraceable and The Bourne Trilogy, worth $300.

Send us your thoughts in 150 words to iconletters@gmail.com. Include your full name, address and contact details. If your letter is published, you get the prize. It's that simple.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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