Typically, the first of the year means getting everything organized and one of the most important jobs is backing up your digital files, particularly your embroidery design files. 

Ideally, you should have your backup files located in three places: on your computer, saved on another storage device, and saved on a device that is at another location. Why three? Worst case scenario, in case of fire or natural disaster, you don't lose both your computer and your primary backup. Plus, laptops, computers, flash drives, and portable hard drives can crash.

Yes, most embroidery sites allow unlimited downloads, but do you really want to visit each one to re-download the designs you purchased over your lifetime? Do you remember all of the vendors from whom you have purchased designs? What if they go out of business?

There are several options to consider when it comes to data backup:

USB drives have really advanced over the last few years. It is amazing the amount of data that can be stored on them, up to 2 TB. If you want a USB drive that is compatible with your embroidery machine, make sure it is no larger than 2MB like this one from DIME.

External hard drives can be built into the machine, used as a stand-alone addition, and also be portable. From a storage standpoint, it is like having an extra computer without all of the space. 

External hard drives have a tremendous amount of storage space, up to 16 TB and are compatible with both mac and pc computers.

You can't get more off-site than the cloud when considering data storage. Services like Carbonite even have backup functions built in.

Online, you may be familiar with DropBox, Microsoft One Drive, or Google Drive. They all have free space available with the option to buy additional space if needed.

With a little bit of research, you are bound to find the right data file storage solutions for your budget! How do you backup and store your files?