Backing Up

Today my thoughts focused on maintaining track of vital documents: birth certificate, passport, driver's license, marriage and baptismal certificates, stock and bond certificates, insurance policies, last year's tax returns, etc.. We have a fire proof security box where important paper documents are stored, but is it easily accessible - no!

Equally important electronic data is still on the hard drive that originated the information. One thing that I must do is create a list of bank account numbers, passwords, etc. and encrypt the list. The encrypted list can be kept on a thumb drive and in my bag/keychain or on an offsite website and, because it's encrypted, our data should be safe.

I also gave a lot of thought to backing up our data. I am not good about doing this. It's my least favorite thing to do and offsite website back up services are looking more enticing. What good is my data on CDs if it's in the affected area? Look at the victims of Hurricane Katrina, their stuff is soaked, floating around or ravaged by fire. It's best to have copies offsite, whether at someone's home (preferrably out of my geographic area), at work or X-Drive (retrievable from any computer anywhere via the Internet).

Like I said, these are thoughts yet, more things to add to my expanding To Do List. What items need backing up and at what frequency?

Daily to second or external drive: important letters, bookmarks, email addresses, phone numbers & addresses, financial records

Weekly on CDR: photos, music, important letters, bookmarks, email addresses, phone numbers & addresses

Monthly on CDR and Offsite: photos, music, important letters, bookmarks, email addresses, phone numbers & addresses

Quarterly to CDR: taxes

Did I miss anything?