Hurricanes, fires, floods, burglaries, computer viruses, overheating motherboards, malfunctioning hard drives all threaten one of the most valuable assets you own as a translator. I do not mean your computer, but rather the data saved on your computer - glossaries, translation memories, previous translations, customer lists, etc. The question is not whether data loss will strike, but when.

Here are a few tips to help you set up a data backup routine:

  1. Automate your back-up. This means that you should let a program run backups at regular intervals (I would recommend daily) rather than having to remember to do that yourself. Also, these programs can perform incremental backups that only save files changed since the last backup. Many external hard drives (see below) come with a backup program, but you can also use paid programs or  freeware such as SyncBack.
  2. Buy an external hard drive. These devices are getting so cheap, with terabyte drives selling for less than $150. They are generally easy to set up and often include backup software. There are even models for laptops that only require a USB connection and do not need to be plugged into a wall socket.
  3. Believe in redundancy. This means that you should no trust a single backup solution. What if your external hard drive fails at the same time as your computer? What if there is a bug in the backup software? Using a mix of methods will make your data safer.
  4. Don’t keep all your data at home. You should consider storing data away from your office, e.g. keeping DVDs you burned at a friend’s house or in a safe deposit box (and remember to replace these regularly - a 6 month old backup won’t be that useful).
  5. Go online. There are numerous online backup services such as Mozy, Carbonite, Adrive and others that store your data for a monthly or annual fee. Many even give you a more limited version of the storage program for free.
  6. Use your e-mail. If you have a web-based e-mail service such as YahooMail or Hotmail, simply enabling the option "Save your sent messages" will create an archive of the work you sent to translation agencies and direct clients. Recovery would be more cumbersome than with an online backup, but it’s free.