A Lesson Learned (Re: Excel budgeting)

[MomToTwoBoys]

Always make a backup of your Excel spreadsheet.

My computer died and on my old HD sits my Excel spreadsheet. I have a backup on the external HD at DH's work, but the more recent version is on the old computer.

Ahh well, I guess I can wait to offload the more updated spreadsheet onto this computer.

[mauimagic]

mahalo for sharing your lesson with us!! How many times have we said "If only I'd backed that up????????"

[MomToTwoBoys]

mahalo for sharing your lesson with us!! How many times have we said "If only I'd backed that up????????"

Yeah it has me really considering getting a USB stick for the budget and putting it somewheres in the house that I won't lose it. Then again, I might as well just buy an external HD to keep here and do official backups on it.

[JoJoBean8]

I do my budget monthly put I always write it out. It sits on my desk and the only thing I have to worry about is my toddler getting it an ripping it. Even at that I don't really worry since my budget rarely ever changes.

[Judi Dial]

Ask LInus, but I think you can put your old hard drive into a new computer, at least temporarily so that you can copy your data. At least, that's what DH did when the computer I use all the time died!

Judi

[scottp999]

Ask LInus, but I think you can put your old hard drive into a new computer, at least temporarily so that you can copy your data. At least, that's what DH did when the computer I use all the time died!

Judi

Very true. If the hard drive is not what failed. Most of the time the power supplys go or something on the mother board.

I had friends that had this happen, and they had all their finances and pictures on the hard drive.

I ordered this from cooldrives:

Name Code Qty Each Options
---------------------------------------------------------------
SATA & IDE Hard Drive SS-124ASD 1 29.99
1.8"/2.5"/3.5"/5.25" HDD
and Optical Drive USB
Adapter Kit

You can take your hard drive out of your machine and use the adapted to copy the data to another computer through a USB port. It worked flawlessly and has connections for all kinds of hard drives, including desktop and
laptop.

Here is a link to it, and a video of using it on that page:

http://www.cooldrives.com/ide-ata-ad...e-adapter.html

What I did, was remove the hard drive from their desktop, plug it in to the adapter, and the usb into my laptop and copied their "my documents" folder and contents that contained their critical data to my machine. I then burned it to DVD and took it to them to put on their new pc.

I still have their broken desktop and plan to fix it sometime soon. Most likely just needs a new power supply for $30. I am going to order a power supply tester to try it out soon. I enjoy helping friends and family out with PC problems and these cool tools come in handy.

Geeksquad at best buy was going to charge them $80 per hour and the price of the DVD to write the data to.

[MomToTwoBoys]

Yeah, that was the recommendation from a few friends of mine to use the SATA USB cable thing. I also had someone explain to me how I can put the old HD into this one and boot that HD instead. Then I could just copy and paste things and be done with it.

I've replaced three PSUs and two MBs in that computer. It was done.

[Preston]

Yeah it has me really considering getting a USB stick for the budget and putting it somewheres in the house that I won't lose it. Then again, I might as well just buy an external HD to keep here and do official backups on it.

I carry a USB FLash drive on my keychain! This has been one of the best moves I have ever made... since I always have my keys on me.

First, I can put any important financial document on it (tax returns, quicken) and can also use it to access from other computers if I need to. All I do is just plug it into the computer, transfer what I need, and take it off.

I also keep hard copies of tax returns but I also have then on this drive for quick reference as well as being on the hard drive. I've been audited before, I have learned to cover my ass.