Your Data Are Assets
I couldn’t find my thumb drive yesterday. For a few hours, I was worried that I left it at a public computer at school. Of course my main concern should have been getting it back, but actually, I was obsessed with trying to remember what was actually on it.
Then my mood dropped like a parachuter having his last and unluckiest jump.
That thumb drive contained hours worth of research and design projects. There were raw images, drafts and final products for my portfolio — files I gathered and developed that required immense research, patience and practice. And where did I back them up? Nowhere.
And even worse: one file may have had my social security number and my address.
Would we ever treat our finances the way we handle our portable data?
Thankfully I found my thumb drive in the pair of pants I wore yesterday. But this was such a close call that I decided to change my habits.
1. No excuses – backing up data: I’m going to periodically copy files from my thumb drive to my external hard drive. It just takes a few minutes of my day. There’s no need to be lazy about this.
2. Securing confidential records: If a file containing my social security number and other confidential material doesn’t need to be on my thumb drive, it won’t stay on there.
There are encryption options available, but that can be a hassle if your thumb or flash drive gets used collaboratively like mine does.
3. Making it returnable: Instead of encrypting, I like this idea of leaving a REWARD IF FOUND.TXT file on your thumb drive with your name and contact information.
4. Same resting spot always: At the end of the day, I put my thumb drive in the same place, much like I do with my wallet. Last night, I was frazzled and forgot to properly store my thumb drive. Funny enough, I remembered to put my wallet away.
Your data don’t look like money, but they’re assets. Remember to treat them that way.
I bought a thumb drive in 2002 for $75. It held 64MB (yes, MB not GB) and contained all of my graduate papers, including my thesis.
The best thing about it was it came with a jump ring to be put on my keychain. I’m one of those freaks who has their keys tied, literally, to their belt loops at all times, so I always knew where my keys were, and thereby my jump drive.
The problem, though, was the connector to the thumb drive was made of rubber. In 2006, it broke off and I now don’t know where it is. However, before that I’d backed my thumb up to my laptop and exported copies of all my papers to Google Docs.
But I miss my wee thumb drive. 🙁
Gasp! That was a terrifying story, especially the part about the Social Security number and address.
I have a subdirectory on each of my computers for backing up the contents of my flash drive. Whenever I close a file that came from or goes to the flash drive, I also do a save-as to the computer’s hard drive. This, on the advice of an IT dude, who remarked that flash drives aren’t very reliable.
Also I keep mine clipped to my car keys. That way I can’t go anywhere without the flash drive. O’course, that only works if you live where there’s no viable public transportation.
I also lost my thumb drive once and had similar conclusions after this lesson.
My current hack is to always plug in, copy necessary file, then plug out and put back into pocket. So far it works well.
I just lost my thumb drive two days ago. I wasn’t too stressed since everything is backed up, but when I went to the librarian help desk to see if they had it, the librarian dumped out a bucket-full of about 25 thumb drives onto the counter! I was kind of shocked at the general carelessness with data.