Backups

Last night I had quite a scare when I thought my external HDD, where I store all of my media, important documents, and past work, was corrupted. I spent about 20 minutes frantically trying to find my files while cursing that I hadn't backed things up to another location. Eventually I managed to get everything to show back up. Still not sure what the problem was but I am counting it as a blessing and a second chance to learn that I should back things up before I lose them.

So I thought why not write a small list of things people can do to keep their important files from being lost and give some links to some good resources.

• If you have a laptop and you treat it like a bombproof Frisbee like me then it is definitely a good idea to have an external HDD that you regularly backup your system to. Mine sits on my desk and runs an automatic backup once a week that keeps everything necessary to replace my whole OS installation. This is really easy to do and there is a variety of tutorials and free software to help. My only recommendation here is to automate the process so you don't need to rely on yourself to do it regularly. This is a pretty good free piece of software to do backups with. SyncBack
• Save the things that really matter to multiple places. For me that is bank records, the lease for my house, password information, photos, past projects, important emails, and other assorted documents. These were the items I was devastated about losing last night. I took all of these things and burned them to a DVD and a spare flash drive the moment I found them again. Then I took one copy and buried it in an unmarked location somewhere in the DFW area... No, but the safe where you keep your passport, SS card, gun, money, and drugs is probably a good place to put a copy of this stuff as well. (Remember to put at least some kind of password protection on this as you definitely don't want your trusty backup full of bank records and passwords being picked up by anybody else.)
• Back up your data online. There are almost an infinite number of websites that provide this service and LifeHacker already has a great post on this so check it out for what to do. This is the best means for protecting your files and easy to do. You can get a decent amount of space for free or unlimited space for quite cheap.

I hope this leads at least one other person to back up their files before it is too late. This is one of the most preached topics on the internet and I'm sure that like me you have been aware of this for years. Also like me I'd guess you don't actually heed this warning either. Maybe today should be that day you change your mind. Remember that on a long enough time line all HDDs will fail and that that time line is probably shorter than you think.

Andrew H