Daily Preparedness Tip: Back Up all of Your Files and Store Them Off Site

Most people don't think much about their personal files until their computer crashes and they lose everything that was ever stored on it or their house burns down along with all of their important documents.  Don't let this happen to you.  Every so often (daily if you are working on a huge project that would take a lot of work to recreate what was lost or weekly/monthly if you don't generate that much work on a daily basis) you will want to:

• Scan all of your important documents (birth certificate, driver's license, passport, legal records, etc) and save these items to your computer.
• Scan all hard copy documents that you wouldn't want to lose (photos, letters, bills, important documents, etc) and save these items to your computer.
• Take a home inventory video every six months or year (be sure to open up your gun cabinets and jewelry boxes to document everything you own, don't forget the out buildings and barns too) and save this video to your computer.
• Use a thumb drive or other sort of external drive and back up all of the files (documents, photos, music, videos, etc) on your computer.  
• Leave this external storage device somewhere other than your home (don't forget to password protect the contents!).  You may want to leave this device in a safe deposit box, at your office, or buried securely in the back yard.  Leaving it in a fire resistant safe at home may or may not work depending on how severe the fire is.
• You can make a second copy of the data on this storage device and carry it on a thumb drive on your key chain if you want your back-up files close at hand.
• Cloud storage is another option (although I am still not convinced at the security of such a service).