Once more on the importance of backups
As mentioned before, the best defence against data loss from viruses or hardware damage is to make comprehensive, frequent backups. As such, I propose the following rule of thumb:
If a piece of data is worth more than the drive space it occupies, a second copy should exist somewhere else.
Nowadays, you can easily pick up hard drives for less than $1 per gigabyte. At those prices, it probably isn’t just personal photos and messages that are worth saving, but any bulk data (movies, songs, etc) that would take more than $1 per gigabyte in effort to find and download again.
Mac users should consider downloading Carbon Copy Cloner. It produced bootable byte-for-byte copies of entire drives. That means that even if the hard drive in your computer dies completely and irreplaceably, you can actually run your system off an external hard drive, with all the data and functionality it possessed when you made the most recent copy.
One nice perk about having one or more such copies is how they can let you undo mistakes. If you accidentally erased or corrupted an important file, you can go back and grab it. Likewise, if you installed a software update that proved problematic, you can shift you entire system back to an earlier state.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Online backup services are another option to consider. They are a lot slower, but there is no need to mess around with DVDs or external hard drives.
October 15th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Speaking of problematic updates…
What’s Really Broken with Windows Update - Trust
By CmdrTaco on yer-kidding-me
Be Cool writes “According to ZDNet, Microsoft has steered itself into a real trust tarpit with Windows Update: ‘See, here’s the problem. To feel comfortable with having an open channel that allows your OS to be updated at the whim of a third party (even/especially* Microsoft … * delete as applicable) requires that the user trusts the third party not to screw around with the system in question. This means no fiddling on the sly, being clear about what the updates do and trying not to release updates that hose systems. While any and all updates have the potential to hose a system, there’s no excuse for hiding the true nature of updates and absolutely no excuse for pushing sneaky updates down the tubes. Over the months vigilant Windows users have caught Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.’”
October 15th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Making backups is really boring.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Time Machine in the Leopard. A superb feature, since it solves the number 1 problem with backups: users are unlikely to do them.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Paul,
I haven’t tried Leopard yet, but will surely write something about it once application support forces me to upgrade.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Option 1: Learn not to care about your data. Don’t save any old email, use a film camera, and only listen to physical CDs and not MP3s. If you have no posessions, you have nothing to lose.
Option 2 goes like this:
You have a computer. It came with a hard drive in it. Go buy two more drives of the same size or larger. If the drive in your computer is SATA2, get SATA2. If it’s a 2.5″ laptop drive, get two of those. Brand doesn’t matter, but physical measurements and connectors should match.
Get external enclosures for both of them. The enclosures are under $30.
Put one of these drives in its enclosure on your desk. Name it something clever like “Backup”. If you are using a Mac, the command you use to back up is this:
sudo rsync -vaxE –delete –ignore-errors / /Volumes/Backup/
If you’re using Linux, it’s something a lot like that. If you’re using Windows, go fuck yourself.
If you have a desktop computer, have this happen every morning at 5AM by creating a temporary text file containing this line:
0 5 * * * rsync -vaxE –delete –ignore-errors / /Volumes/Backup/
and then doing sudo crontab -u root that-file
If you have a laptop, do that before you go to bed. Really. Every night when you plug your laptop in to charge.
If you’re on a Mac, that backup drive will be bootable. That means that when (WHEN) your internal drive scorches itself, you can just take your backup drive and put it in your computer and go. This is nice.
When (WHEN) your backup drive goes bad, which you will notice because your last backup failed, replace it immediately. This is your number one priority. Don’t wait until the weekend when you have time, do it now, before you so much as touch your computer again. Do it before goddamned breakfast. The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don’t push it.
That third drive? Do a backup onto it the same way, then take that to your office and lock it in a desk. Every few months, bring it home, do a backup, and immediately take it away again. This is your “my house burned down” backup.
“OMG, three drives is so expensive! That sounds like a hassle!” Shut up. I know things. You will listen to me. Do it anyway.
Update: Mac users: for the backup drive to be bootable, you need to do two things:
When you partition the drive, use GUID, not Apple Partition Map;
Get Info on the drive and un-check “Ignore ownership on this drive” under “Ownership and permissions.”
You can test whether it’s bootable by holding down Option while booting and selecting the external drive.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
[...] explanation. Disk Utility found no problems with the disk or with disk permissions. Once again, the importance of backups is [...]