NEBRASKA COMPUTER STOLEN Computer Theft A Reminder To Have Backup:

Computer Theft A Reminder To Have Backup

Irreplaceable data lost
Posted: 8:47 PM May 13, 2009
Last Updated: 8:47 PM May 13, 2009
Reporter: Malorie Maddox
Email Address: sixonline@wowt.com

An Omaha teacher regrets not backing up her computer after a theft cost her precious memories and years of research.

Natasha Mohr is getting aquatinted with a new computer after her old computer was stolen a few weeks ago. “I'm kind of a computer geek. I had built that myself and kept upgrading it for a number of years. It was really awful to lose that as well.”

Natasha says thieves came in through the kitchen, broke out the window and ripped off the screen. Since then, she's been digging old photo albums out of her basement, hoping to replace some of the four years of photos she had stored on her hard drive. She also lost years of her teaching research.

“They also disrupted the lives of the maybe 150 students I'm teaching right now.” Natasha says she routinely backed up her hard drive, but wishes she would have stored the information on a portable hard drive. Consumer Reports suggests we should all do that.

Last year alone, more than 10 percent of U.S. households say they lost important information on their computers. When choosing a backup drive, make sure you're getting enough storage space. A good rule of thumb is to get at least as much as your computer hard drive.

Natasha is thankful she has her old photo albums and the burglars didn't harm her pets. “We lost years of our lives. We lost trips we had taken, pictures of animals we loved that we'll never get back.”

She's working on rebuilding another hard drive, but this time will use a portable backup device to save her memories.