Most people forget about their digital assets when planning for an emergency (my real world example). Digital assets include documents, tax records, receipts, photos, videos, etc. What would you do if your irreplaceable photos, videos, and other memories were lost forever? Being prepared includes scanning, organizing, and archiving your digital assets. This data will make it easier to rebuild your life after a disaster. Advantages of digitizing data include:
- Preserving photos and documents
- Documents and images are easier to find and access
- Significant space savings over physical documents
- Multiple backups for added protection
- Useful for insurance claims and reimbursement
Digitizing and organizing takes time and patience but your records will be backed-up and easy to access. Mountains of printed information can be condensed onto a memory card, thumb drive, or USB drive. Digital copies do not decay over time the way printed material can. Digitizing can be done all at once or a little at a time. You will be amazed at how much you can complete with a minimal time investment. You must decide to incorporate your backup plan in your daily routine. If you are serious about archiving your digital assets then you must start immediately and DO NOT procrastinate.
Getting Started on your quest for digital archiving
Select the Backup System that best fits your requirements
Select the Backup Type for storing your digital assets
Chose a scanner and Scan your documents
Create and maintain Redundant backup systems
Organize Digital Assets in folders and files
Use Quicken or other accounting software in conjunction with your digital archives
Backup Other Digital Assets such as application data, databases, website content, etc.
Document digitization includes scanning, organizing, and archiving. Data backup and archiving is one of those pesky tasks that no one likes to do but it is critical to safeguarding your data. Just as you must change the oil in your car to protect your engine, you must backup and archive your data to protect it. Once you get the bulk of your digitizing finished it takes only a few hours per year to scan and organize the data for that year.