About the author

T. D. Todd is a veteran network administrator and computer specialist for the University of Alabama at Birmingham serving as an Information System Specialist III. He has served in a variety of capacities from home personal computer consultant, to project manager and network administrator in different roles in his almost 20 year career in IT. He earned a degree in Communications from Samford University and is currently earning a Master of Engineering from UAB.

His experience dealing with individual and enterprise data management has driven him to write this book as a necessary tool for the home computer users braving the paradigm shift in computing. Home data management and helping the individual user master their home data is an important task for the novice user to grasp. This is his first book.

What is this all about? Why should you buy this book?

I play with computers for a living. I call it play because they can be pretty darned fickle and sometimes do the craziest things. One has to keep a lighthearted mentality when dealing with computers. And I’ve been playing for almost 20 years and have seen some crazy computers and, well, users of computers.

So playing for 20 years, one thing I’ve noticed are most novice/beginners computer users, like my mother in law, or even some respected colleagues don’t really have a grasp of what a backup is, does, or the purpose for doing it.

Until, you know. Something blows up and they call me or their resident computer geek. No, I don’t use a pocket protector but I did years ago and even had the little pocket screwdriver tweaker dealŠyes, geek city Johnson!

I thought, well, I know some about this, practice this at home and at work, and I like to help people. So what about some type of ’self-help’ book on how to help people get a handle on their data at home? You know just help them get started doing something I know will only get bigger with time.

After all, people have backups of their house keys, car keys, paperwork in filing cabinets, and other ‘backups’ of day to day items. Do they have a backup of their computer data?

What would someone do in the event of a computer emergency and their hard drive was stolen or died? You know, like if you dropped your car keys in the river and didn’t have a backup.

And please if you are a network administrator or computer whiz/geek, then this isn’t for you although I would appreciate any constructive critiquing and of course the sales possibilities. I already know there are 1482 billion methods for doing backups and strategies for storage and types, cloud storage, I get it already.

Bottom line, computers are everywhere. More and more people will face this task. I want to help the novice user get started backing up documents, pictures, movies and sundry documents.

And I want to help them gather a better understanding of how to do it as even the most ‘automated’ process may not get the data they care about and don’t want to lose.