Back Up!

Today Stewart Wolpin wrote in his blog about ways to back-up your hard drive in a blog entry titled: “Learning to back up the hard (disk) way: a crash course”

I agree with much of what he wrote, especially the part about photos being the one thing thatI would most hate to lose in case of a fire, natural disaster or the inevitable hard drive crash. DVD’s are an ok option, as are external hard drives, but both of those methods requre you to remember to do back-ups on a regular basis. And unless you have off site storage, mean they are still located in your home or office. I still do the occasional back-up to DVD’s and my EHD, but a few months ago I found a more reliable method that works very well for me.

I opted for an on-line solution called Carbonite. Carbonite’s online backup service starts automatically and works quietly and continuously in the background protecting your data. The online backup software is always looking for new data on your PC. The moment you add or modify files, Carbonite swings into action to back up your data. (Provided of course that your PC is connected to the internet.) Their prices are very reasonable – less than $5 a month for unlimited storage when you purchase at least a year’s subscription.

Not only do I not have to worry about remembering to do back-ups, I know that all of my photos and almost as importantly my scrapping supplies: kits, actions, templates etc. are protected.

Have you backed up lately?

Scrappers Guide

In my introductory post I mentioned that my decision to get try digital scrapbooking was strongly influenced by Linda Sattgast’s beautiful work at Scrappers Guide. A couple of double page layouts she displayed that used photos as backgrounds really caught my eye, and I kept going back to look at them over and over.

The site is dedicated to scrapping with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Activity in the forum is about average. There are some very knowledgeable folks that hang out there who are happy to answer questions.

They offer a free weekly newsletter with tutorials and a monthly Premier membership. The Premier membership includes Linda’s excellent video tutorials, written instructions, and items necessary to complete the tutorials, and a complete digiscrap kit. The cost is $36 a year and is well worth the cost. Some of the past premier tutorials have covered topics like how to make lace, gradient maps, pins, grunge etc.

Linda’s training CD’s are excellent and definitely a good starting place for those new to digital scrapping. The web store doesn’t carry a lot of scrapping kits, mostly coordinated albums and training materials. They have some mini video tutorials available for a $1 each, that although not nearly as in depth as the Premier membership monthly videos, are still great training. So be sure to check out the bargain section as well!