It's 3 AM. Do you know where all your data is?

The other day we found a box that had been packed when we moved from Ohio to Maryland some four and a half years ago.  As I was unpacking it, I found a thumb drive (USB Jump Drive) that had been in that box for four years.

It got me thinking.  Did I even remember it was missing?

I received my first computer in 1989.  It was a hand-me-down from someone that I had dated at the time, who worked with computers.  I can't tell you the name of the machine - it was something from a minor manufacturer - except it ran DOS and was really limited, came with a green on black CRT and about the only thing it was good for was word processing, and even at that, was pretty useless.

My first REAL computer was in 1992, and it ran Windows. Then came the next computer, and the next, and then a new one approximately every three years.

Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 7 and now Windows 10.

And those are just the desktops. There were laptops, too - used for genealogy, and book writing and research.  Now I have a Mac Book Pro that confuses me to no end.  I am a Windows person.

But with all this machinery, there also came exterior drives, thumb drive and portable drives, all bigger and faster then their predecessors.

This isn't even counting my husband's drives, computers and the like.

But as I stood there holding the thumb drive, it dawned on me:  Do any of us really know where all of our electronic storage devices are?

Now think about this - can you account for every disk, every hard drive, every thumb drive, every portable drive, every home server and all of the cloud content that you have access to and contains your data?

Doubtful, is my guess.

And where have you stored your genealogy files, family picture scans and DNA RAW files?

I know that we frequently remind people to back it all up, and store a copy outside of your house.

But we seldom remind people that you have to manage the storage sites and the storage devices.

Misplace one USB thumb drive and after a while, do you know its even missing?  Do you know what data is on it that now is missing?  Have you ever taken an old computer to the basement just to get it out of the way until you figure out what to do with it, and it's still there?   And what is on the drive(s) of said computer?

More frightening - who is going find that device?

If you don't, could someone else?

Are they going use, look through it, or toss it?

And here is something else to consider - do your storage devices work?  What about that thumb drive that went through a flooded basement? If you have your Great Uncle Clem's genealogy work that you have been meaning to transcribe for the past twenty years, is it on a 5 1/2 floppy disc from the dark ages of personal computing?  What about 3 1/2 inch floppies?  Does you computer even have a drive that can read them?

Unlike photographs that we can make prints of if we have a negative with a scratch, if your storage medium with electronic data begins to degrade in one spot on a disk, you could lose everything on that disk.

Folks, if you handle a photograph with white gloves, but toss a plastic cased jump drive into a purse, backpack or briefcase and then leave it in a scorching hot car for hours or days, or years, and think nothing of it, there is a very real disconnect going on.

So, here is my challenge for the last weekend of April: This weekend go through your house, your office your basement, your attic and your storage locker and all of your drawers in every room and round up every disk, jump drive, portable drive, every old computer and find your "storage" and look to see what is on that storage.  If the machines don't work, set them aside.  Make a list of your cloud storage sites - a tangible list.

If you don't need the drives, destroy them.  If you do, label them.  Find a safe place in your house and lock them away. (HINT: Not in your bedrooms - Thieves look for valuables in bedrooms.)

There are some links below on how to destroy a hard drive, because you never, ever, just toss them.

My point is, drive management is important - make it part of your spring cleaning and organizing.

And its just as important as backing up your data.

But know where your data is.


How and Why to Destroy Old Flash Drives

Organizing Your Flash Drives

The Right Way to Destroy Computer Hard Drives