It's Backup Awareness Month

Drive manufacturer Maxtor has declared June "Backup Awareness Month"—but given that Google News didn't pick it up until today, I'm not sure how much awareness they've generated. According to the special Backup Awareness site, they spent June 1-13 hanging out in downtown San Francisco taking photos of passers-by. By now they're in Chicago, so I guess I missed my chance. (Anyone who actually saw the Maxtor representatives or got your picture taken, post a comment to the blog!)

You still have until June 30 to enter the "Drive a Day" drawing to win a Maxtor one-touch backup drive.

The site also includes various articles and tips, most of them (not surprisingly) focused around Maxtor's own products. But their Backup Best Practices are worth following whether or not you have a Maxtor drive.

1) Develop a backup schedule.
Back up your data daily or at minimum weekly.

2) Back up everything.
Today you can easily back up all of your hard drive data. No need to spend time sorting through every file or folder. Invest in a storage solution that's twice the size of your internal hard drive, to give your system room to grow.

3) Do it automatically.
Set it and forget it. Use a solution that's easy to set up and provides automatic backups.

4) Rotate backups.
Give yourself added protection incase of an earthquake, fire, flood, or theft. Use two drives and rotate one offsite.

5) Don't procrastinate.
Unfortunately, the need to back up data is often a lesson learned from a bitter experience. Don't let it happen to you. Protect yourself!

If you value your data and your time, every month is backup awareness month.