I was listening to a story on NPR by Laura Sydell called Computing in the Cloud: Who Owns Your Files? The story brought back all of the fears I’ve had about working in the clouds but have suppressed because:

A. I want the convenience that cloud computing offers;

B. I recently experienced the Computer Crash of Doom and want to know I have reliable backups;

C. I want to get more work use out of my iPod Touch and cloud work is the way.

So what was the bottom line of the NPR piece?

Read the User Agreement. Yes, the gist of the story was that none of us are reading the user agreement with Google or Yahoo or any other company that is housing our emails, documents and files. We actually covered that subject last month, but hey, I’m one of those who never, ever reads the user agreement. Who has the time? Who has the brain capacity? Who likes sifting through pages and pages of legalese?

This is a problem, according to Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at Harvard. All someone has to do is accuse you of something – unproven – and the company hosting your files can simply cut you off, close your account, no questions asked, rather than entering into a legal battle.

There are no rules and more importantly – no laws – when it comes to hosting your files.

Ever since I went to Gmail in the clouds from Apple’s Mail on my computer, I’ve wondered “what would happen if Gmail went down…forever?” The entire record of my work over the last three years would be gone. I tried backing up all of my historical Gmails onto my computer once but it was a major undertaking and never became a habit.

If we aren’t reading the user agreements, how can we protect ourselves from major loss in the clouds?

1. Backups of backups? Does it make sense to have the copy on your harddrive along with the copy online? Lately, I’ve been composing my documents in Google Docs and only saving them back on my harddrive as needed. Should I do it as a rule?

2. Backups of backups of backups? Once I save my docs on my computer, my Time Capsule captures them every hour on the hour. But is there a way to get my Time Capsule to pull my cloud work into a backup drive? Or is that an app that is on the way because it is a critical process that is missing from cloud computing?

3. Distributed files. Does it make sense not to have all of your work and files on one system? Sure it seems convenient and integrated to use all of Google’s cloud working solutions, but should we put some of our work – or back up some of our work – on other sites? Like using Dropbox file storage as a repository for anything and everything from everywhere?

4. Being selective. Do we need to be more selective about what we are willing to put online, keep online, and work on in the clouds? Are we getting a little too careless and thoughtless about the ease of cloud computing or rushing to it without a security plan in place because it seems like the place we need to be?

No technology is failsafe or foolproof. When we are using technology for “convenience,” but have to back up that technology “just in case,” are we losing some of that convenience that we are craving? It seems that, as usual, nothing is ultimately free and everything comes with a price.

How much are you willing to spend – and risk – on cloud computing and how are you backing up your work?

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But last week, my 10-month old MacBook crashed. And died. And now I’m slowly uncovering the depth and breadth of my arrogance. Because, my dear readers, I had not backed up my computer for 10 months. And the only reason I had a 10-month old backup of my data is because it occurred as I was getting my files from my old G4 laptop to my MacBook last Fall.

This is a cautionary tale for anyone out there who is still finding every excuse in the book not to back up their computer. And I had many.

My biggest excuse for not backing up was that I just couldn’t wrap my head around how to get it set up and how to make it happen. I think I also had a secret fear that I would set it up incorrectly and somehow save my files in the wrong place causing the disappearance of everything on my computer. I’m not sure how I got it into my head that backing up was going to be hard, but I avoided it like the Plague.

Today, less than a week after the Big Computer Meltdown (and my own tearful personal meltdown), I am assessing the business impact of lost data. My tears last week weren’t actually about my work files but about losing 10 months worth of photos and videos of my 2-year-old daughter. This week, I can’t muster up tears, but can see some dollars spinning down the drain as I have to:

1. rewrite half a dozen proposals that I was readying to send out to new and existing clients.
2. rewrite a new book proposal that was almost ready to send to my agent to shop around.
3. do a salvage expedition through my Gmail Sent Box to find any documents I sent to clients so I still have some semblance of a business record.
4. upload any documents I can find to Google Docs – the only other place where I had put some critical documents as part of my “experiment” with using Google Docs.
5. rewrite my long list of sites that I use to market my various projects and client projects that took me over a year to compile.

And for backups?

I left my local Mac store last week with red eyes from crying, a black MacBook, and an Apple Time Capsule. I charged the owner of the store to make sure I walked out with everything I needed to be up and working immediately as well as to be able to back up my files without any effort or thought on my part.

Now, every hour on the hour, when I am within range of my wifi connection (via the Time Capsule), my files are backed up (the Time Capsule has 500 GB of space). I don’t have to do anything more since configuring it. I don’t have to think about it. And I don’t have to wait until the end of the day or the weekend to do it. It happens behind-the-scenes while I’m still getting my work done.

My list of important files I have lost continues to grow. Each item I add to that list means another 1-3 hours of rewriting, recompiling, recreating. That is lost time. Lost income. I think if I had thought of backing up my computer in pure business terms – in dollars – I may have been motivated to do something sooner. For now, I just have to bite the bullet.

When was the last time you backed up your computer? And what is your backup set up like? Please share so anyone out there who is still making excuses can potentially find a solution that is right for them.

NOTE: I also blogged about the more “personal” side of this topic at Entrepreneur Mom on WorkItMom.

(photo by Apple; bullethole courtesy of clipart)

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