Post date: Feb 3, 2017 5:41:24 PM

It’s a New Year – Resolve to Take care of your Computer, Files, and Photos

Most of us have multiple devices these days: I have a Windows PC, a Windows laptop, a MAC laptop, several iPads, a Kindle Paper White, an iPhone 6, and a new Kindle Fire that I got for Christmas. I create documents on my PC and laptops and save them to Google Drive. I take lots of pictures with my iPhone and iPads and then sync them with my computer, so I am dumping lots of pictures onto my PC, as well as storing them in the cloud. However, I had a wake-up call over the holidays: I got a message that my automatic backup had failed because there wasn’t enough room on my external hard drive.

I took a closer look at my computer and then asked my husband for advice: he takes care of all of the technology at our two area public libraries. Mike is also known for his bluntness. He looked at my computer’s libraries for documents and pictures, and then said, “Honey--you have too much stuff on this PC! Get rid of some of these files and pictures. You’ve got a lot of duplicates.”

I hate it when he’s right. I discovered that I had “dumped” all of the pictures on my iPad and iPhone half a dozen times over the fall, without stopping to sort them out, which meant there were indeed many duplicate photos in my picture library. So, I spent much of the first week of January sorting through folders and got rid of over 15 gig of data. That got me thinking about how the start of a new year is a great time to do some maintenance and create a few new habits.

Clean it up! Delete Duplicate Files.

Windows PCs have libraries for your documents and pictures. I create a lot of folders to organize my work; however, it is easy to have duplicate files in several folders, especially if you have a big project and save it at several stages. I recently wrote a long scholarly essay about local author Ruth Suckow; I had copies of research, pictures, notes, and the finished essay. I was able to sort through and get rid of almost a third of my files.

Windows builds in some great tools: open the folder and click on the column with dates to put the list of documents into chronological order and then keep the most current and complete versions. I also save the final, polished version to my Google Drive.

You have probably already enabled your smartphone to back up your photos automatically. However, I use a USB cable to connect my iPhone or iPad to my computer and download pictures to my computer. Sorting pictures can be time-consuming: fortunately, windows lets you look at items in a variety of formats, including as a list, small icons, large icons or extra-large icons, which is ideal for photos. Most of us tend to take multiple photos of the same item and can get rid of the ones that did not turn out as well. Doing so will save space. Remember, too, that once you delete it from your iPhone or iPad, the photo will no longer appear on your iCloud, which is another compelling reason to store a copy on your computer.

Save it to the Cloud!

Hopefully, you are using iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive to back up your most precious documents and photos. If you aren’t, this is the time to start. I prefer Google Drive but have used Dropbox and iCloud. If you have an android phone, your photos are saved to your Google Photos. If you have an iPhone or iPad, photos are saved to iCloud. However, if you do nothing, you will soon fill up your “free” space and have to purchase additional storage. So you may want to use an additional cloud service to archive your most precious family photos.

Do you have virus protection—and malware protection?

If you are using a windows machine, you’re probably using their built-in Windows Defender, which works well. However, with the onslaught of malware, you also need to protect your computer, and your data, from malware. Mike’s favorite program is called Malware Bytes. There is a free trial version as well as the paid version.

Backup Data

Are you backing up your computer with an external hard drive? If not, go to Staples or Best Buy and look at their products. You can find a 2 TB hard drive for about $80. That will give you peace of mind and hold a lot of files, videos, and photos! An external hard drive is like an insurance policy: it protects you in case of failure of your computer’s hard drive. This small black box hooks up to your computer and backs up your computer’s documents and photos once a week.

Several years ago I had a computer disaster in early April when my PC’s internal hard drive failed. This was terrible timing for a writing teacher, who also writes technology columns, to lose her PC and files! Fortunately, I had all of my important documents backed up on Google Drive. My husband installed a new hard drive, copied data over to it from my external hard drive, and I was back to work within a couple of days. I lost very few documents. Any student papers needing to be graded could be downloaded from the course website, and fortunately, I had uploaded graded papers as I went along. I learned my lesson: it is better to be prepared for a failure than to pay hundreds of dollars to try to retrieve those files after a failure occurs.

Take time to look at your computer and delete duplicate files, check your virus protection, download a malware detection and removal program if you don’t already have one, and look at your cloud storage options. It’s a great investment of time to protect your family documents and photos.

Side bar

https://www.lifewire.com/external-hard-drive-2640402

Johnson, Lisa. “Before You Buy an External Hard Drive.”

Lifewire.com. Updated September 03, 2016

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/

Link to download the free trial of Malwarebytes

End of Side Bar