Memory Shortage

No, I don't mean my own memory either!  A few months ago, my husband looked at how much memory was left on my computer and made a comment that he couldn't believe how much I had already used up.  We kinds knew that I needed to do something but then . . .we did nothing.  Sunday night, January 15th, I was busy scrapbooking digitally when all of a sudden, I can a message that said something to effect that it couldn't save my work due to lack of memory.  Oops!!!!  Guess what?  I ran out of memory!!! AHHHHHHHHH  So this is what I've been busy doing:

1) Looking at "my computer" to figure out if there were programs that I didn't need anymore  that were taking up space (There are tons of Microsoft updates . .. . I wonder how many of those you have to keep - or can you delete the old ones?  Don't worry I did not delete any of them HA)

2) Burning Discs - Now, I realize that a computer Hard drive is NOT a safe place to store all of your family memories and I've been "meaning" to do something.  Nothing like having no memory to make you "do" something.  I am currently working on putting all photos, photo pages, and documents I want to keep onto discs. 

3)Uploading - I'm also uploading photos and photo pages into sites I order from.  Yes, again, I realize that this are not totally "safe" but they are a back-up source for now.  I am busy making albums in Snapfish for all of my photos.  The nice part is anytime I want to order - they they are!!!  My 12x12 photo pages that I need to still order I am uploading into Scrapping Simply - a great printing site - I can store them there forever after I print them so it is a great place to use as a back up.  This takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r.  I did April, May, June and July in one day.  And that was back to back - it took about 8 hours.  Crazy. 

4) Deleting - Did you know you should empty your Recycle bin? HA!  Holy cow I had a lot of stuff in there that was taking up HUGE amounts of space.  I also cleaned out my documents and got rid of tons of things that were outdated or just not useful anymore.  Each document doesn't take up a lot of space but when you have a few hundred . .. well, that is valuable space.  I have also deleted photo pages that I have uploaded to Scrapping Simple and burned onto a disc.  Lets just say that freed up about 25 GB just deleting a few months worth (I think my digital scrapbooking is taking up LOADS of space!!)  I now need to also clean out my accessories in my scrapbooking folder as well.  All those digital papers and stickers I don't like or have used so much that I don't like them anymore !! 

5) Things I need to do - there are 2 things I still need to do.  1)Back up photos on my External Hard Drive.  I will also back up the most recent photo pages.  2) I plan on using some Christmas money to sign up for a year of a back up service called Sugar Sync.  It has come recommended to my by another blogger and after doing research on my own, I feel like this is the best service for me.  It will do a real time back up of everything on my computer so if there is a crash, I can retrieve everything easily.  I've had one instance of a virus in the last two years where I thought I lost everything and then recently got the blue screen one day - kinda scary.  I did not lose anything but don't want to risk that either.  Sugar Sync has a limit on storage space so cleaning out my hard drive actually helps with that as well. 

Needless to say, this little project is consuming a lot of time this week but it feels good to be getting it done.  I should have done this months . .a year ago.  Too man precious memories to lose!!


What do you do to backup your important information??  Do you feel less secure now that so much is stored on a computer verses the "old way" of paper/negatives?  Sometimes I feel like my data is so much more unsafe stored the way it is and miss all of the paper storage!!