Hi
This is Ila Turner - a lot of you know me and know I know a little bit
about computers and how to save my information. Last week I lost my
computer that I use for work and where I save my designs.
Before you go moaning and thinking about all the designs I lost, or cheering
as the case may be, let me assure you I did not lose one thing - not a single
thing.
This will work for any country in the world as long as you have a
computer connection.
And I don't own anything external for backing up designs, documents or
pictures. No
CD's - no external hard drives - no thumb drives - no flash cards
(except for the
ones that go in my camera). I've given all that I used to own to my
daughter and
the only thumb drive I have I load my movie scripts on to take to
Staples to have
mass printed along with the color DVD covers and posters.
Nope, not a single one was lost nor were my bookmarks from either browser: IE or
Firefox.
Now I am going to tell you how to do this - but I am also going to tell
you that this will only work for you IF you do the work to make it work.
You can have all the external hard drives and devices in the world
sitting next to
your computer but if you don't do your backups when your computer
crashes you will
still lose everything. I do mine every day for designs as I get them,
& all else on Sat.
Unless you develop a method of emailing your important documents, pictures and
designs to your gmail, yahoo and hotmail account every day, week or bi-weekly
you will have the exact same result as if you didn't put them on
those external devices - your computer will crash and you will have nothing
Yes, there is a little bit of work but to me, it's a lot less than
backing them up
to an external device and if heaven forbid, there is a natural
disaster you won't
have to worry if you should have taken it with you. Next time you get on line
everything will be waiting for you. That's the beauty of it. That & the cost.
Consider what you have invested in designs and divide that by the time you will
spend emailing everything to your new accounts and I think that you
will find it is
more than worth the tradeoff.
Remember all of this is FREE - so I don't have to keep putting in FREE below.
To keep your Firefox Bookmarks - download the Firefox browser - I recommend the
older one as the newer one still has some bugs - at least it does for
my taste - it
is available in many languages:
Load it onto your computer and then click on Tools - Addons - Find
Updates & Search
for Foxmarks - and install it. You will need to create an account and
then it will
save your bookmarks and automatically back them up whenever you use your Firefox
browser, or even just open it up. I love Firefox and its my preferred
browser and
has more users now than IE. Maybe you'll grow to love it also.
Something I was surprised to learn when I signed back into IE was that
my favorites
was there as well. I can't tell you how I found them - it was
accidental, but there
they were and following their instructions which were not easy I now
have them back
also.
Isn't technology wonderful <smile>?
Set yourself up accounts at these servers depending on how many gigs you need:
www.gmail.com offers 2.5 gigs of storage
www.hotmail.com
hotmail offers 2 gigs of storage
www.yahoo.com around 2 gigs though they claim unlimited in their FREE
acct not true
Rocket Mail and Y Mail another 2 free email addresses through Yahoo
with storage:
Create email addresses i.e.: picturessmithfamily@...
and begin sending your pics to that account TODAY so you are
protected. I send to
gmail, hotmail and yahoo all at once. If google servers ever crash,
the others will
still be there. And once you've typed the address into the address bar it auto
fills from then on so its no work. You can zip them or not, your choice.
Create email addresses i.e. mydesigns1@... and start emailing
your designs -
here is what I do - I use JEF files. I take my jef,color chart,
copyright info &
digitizer info and zip it up and name it with the designers name and
the name of the
design so my file will read this: JEF:ABC_Bluebird.zip and attach it
to the email.
I can send around 12 of these on one email depending on if they are 4x4 or 5x7.
Now I have a little over 4 gigs of designs all together, samples, from
testing and ones I have bought, so
this initially took me a while to do but what I did was this.
I did that for 2 gigs of designs because while gmail will hold 2.5
gigs - before they stop delivering mail I don't want to take a change
Then I opened the second one and named it ilasdesigns2@... and
did the same thing with the next set of designs. It took me about 3
months working a little here and a little there - and of course I sent
them all from this address so they are all backed up here as well.
And the money I didn't spend on external devices? You got it, more
embroidery supplies, or designs he he.
The reason I started doing this? I had a 250 gig hard drive die on me
3 months after I bought it - a Seagate and nothing could be recovered
from it - and they come with a 5 year guarantee. All my designs were
backed up on it. All of them - it made me ill to think of all the
money I lost. I am disabled and a lot of those designs I paid for
picking up cans and bottles, and I am not kidding or exaggerating.
Hey if you want something bad enough, you'll find a way to get it.
My daughter and I spent time in a domestic violence shelter and I
wanted designs to make things for the women and children who came
after us, and those designs were for them. 90% of what I buy for
designs now goes towards brightening the lives of those who come
through that shelter.
My 15 year old daughter and her friends also makes things for the
shelter - one day she came home from school with a list of names and
said "Hey Mom, these kids want to help us make things for the shelter,
would it be ok if they come over every other Saturday and we do that
all day?" Boy was I ever proud 8-) But anyway, I am digressing lol
I knew there had to be a better way so when Google began offering
gmail - at first you had to have an invite - but not anymore - I
found someone to send me an invite and it came with 100
invites I could give away. I gave 20 to me and the rest to others.
And the rest, as they say is history.
Group owners - you are welcome to put this in the files of your group for
your members to use as long as you give me credit. This is one of the
most often
discussed things on the groups - I cringe everytime I see someone losing their
designs due to a computer crash and go to their backup devices or
devices and they
are no longer good, it makes me sick when all this FREE technology is
there for the
taking for us to use.
We all need to be just a little smarter than the average computer
manufacturer and
hardware sellers that want us to buy-buy-buy that's all. More money
for fun-fun-fun
ILA in Maine mailto:sewcraftyme@...
I convert to ART format for digitizers.
My new web page:
New forum: Fun: Freebies & ads:
