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I only have five living files that I continually update. I never save over an old one. I just save it with the same filename but a new date, like so . . . "Filename 20XX/XX/XX." That way, if for any reason I ever need an older version, they're there with the new ones.
Amazon Prime users have free online storage. here Dropbox is free here Gmail users have drive space as well! Save your shit online so that when your PC dies, you can get your stuff. Also, do the following. Take picts of the top and reverse of your credit cards. Put them in a password protected ZIP file and save those to your online storage. Put your Driver license there as well. I even do this with my car loan, mortgage, insurance documents etc. House burns down and I got all that stuff.
Even better is to reduce all of your files and move to a file system that is entirely synchronized. Here's what I recommend: - Take an afternoon to delete a bunch of your files down to a more manageable size. Find out where you hold your biggest files with windirstat or GrandPerspective for Mac and delete all that shit that's clogging up your drive. I went down from 300GB to about 120GB of files that I actually care about that way. - Optionally (but worth the trouble), create a filesystem to organize your files in such a way that every file can fit in. My folders are: Photos, Creativity, Documents, Movies/TV, Music, Projects, Work and University. Some subfolders and voilà, all of your files are organized. - This is handy because having one folder with all your files in it means that you can easily sync that folder. 100GB: Google Drive is only $2 a month. Because I don't like Google, I use Copy by Barracuda. 250GB for $5 a month, with full file histories and with handy un-deleting of files. 1TB for $10. Has a solid app with automatic photo sync, meaning that every photo you take is automatically uploaded when you're on Wifi. Dropbox and Google Drive are also great (but not for me). - Then, sync the files you need on multiple computers and make regular backups of your Uberfolder. This way I have the most important files online, on three computers and on a backup disk. It's really nice to know that you have your files safe and that you can access them anywhere with an internet connection.
TrueCrypt is dead. Development was discontinued by mid-2014 and the original devs (as other security oriented people) are saying that the source is NOT secure as there are several severe code flaws, found in the second audit round. A promising successor to TrueCrypt is VeraCrypt as it fixes many vulnerabilities and security issues found in TrueCrypt. More to read here. It even got a PPA.