I spent time backing up to an external harddrive and then made DVD's and some CD's of the designs. It's a task that don't take long but if you lost your designs how long would it take to replace them?

I keep my embroidery machine attatched to a power surge plug and the computer downstairs too. But the laptop I am on at the moment is not, which is worrying as it is not my laptop so I better look after it

I have all my designs backed up on a flash drive, I plan to get them put on a CD some time! I need to take it with me to my son's and have him burn a CD for me. My CD burner quit working and he wasn't happy about that cause he put it in less than 3 years ago when he gave me an upgrade on my computer for Christmas and he paid $400 for the CD drive.

Not just in case of power surges--last weekend I installed the new updates and my computer kept shutting down by itself--really scarry. I had to restore to earlier date and everything came back. Then I did complete system backup. You are right--it can happen at any time.

I have every design backed up on DVD's. It makes life so much easier. I go back and forth from my laptop to desktop. Carol

I had the same thing happen but thankfully after the second reboot the drive came back online and was fine *phew* .. a system restore might help you out too, even if you can only now recover the drive and transfer to another drive its better than a totally failed drive, eh?

As a point of interest: if you're using an external drive to back up, that drive should only be plugged in while you're saving to it, then unplug it so it's not vulnerable to power surges etc :) xXx

Another thing I do is I write down (you can copy) the address of the websites I go to (in categories) just in case my computer goes out.I would hate to rely on my memory for anything. Can't even recall what I was doing a few minutes ago let alone where I saw a design. Right now I can't find my gallon button jar. Stella

I second that. I lost everything a couple years ago. Now I back up to 2 external hard drives and a few 'thumb' drives.

I have all my designs backed up on a flash drive...THANKS!
Many flowers for you!

There is no such thing as too much backup, since anything can happen to the destinations. I make 2 CD's when I copy-to have them in different places-and also put those on an external.
Flash drives are great because they hold so much, but can be corrupted as well. I copy to one of those, and then it goes on the cd. Just got a more compact external, and it will all go on there, too.
Jo