What would I lose?

Currently I am in the process of transferring all of my files onto an external hard drive. I pretty much my whole life story on my computers, yes computers, I have four of them. Now common sense would have me using one and storing all information in one location, but I am of the new generation and like doing things the hard way. Knock on wood, I don't have any files really backed up on my network drives at school. If the whole system was to go out, I would lose a lot of my information. Fortunately, two of my three classes I teach are directly off Blackboard so all of the information (files and presentations) are stored on the Internet. I have been delaying for a long time to get an external hard drive, but I finally have one sitting on my desk. Now I just need to get going on transferring all the data.

My life would go south very fast if I was to lose this information. I am not really scared about my personal life, because I don't store a lot of documents from my personal life on the computer. As for my professional life, hours upon hours would be spent on rehatching a lot of the curriculum that I have already put a lot of leg work into as well as numerous hours trying to rehatch proposals and grants that I have been in the process of writing. I think storage of informaiton is something that has not been preached to us enough because nobody thinks the inevitable will happen. Hopefully, if that inevitable happens to me, it will hold off until the summer so I can have everything backed up.

Even backing up on an external hard drive is not enough. When I was in High School, I burnt through two external hard drives. While technologies have improved greatly since then, there is still the possibility of the hard drives frying. I think individuals also need to back up burned DVD's with all the information on their desktop, possibly even a couple times.