You may have noticed things being a little sparse around here Tuesday. I try for at least one meaty post a day, and Tuesday just didn’t happen.
Well, there’s a reason. I managed to temporarily kill (perhaps stun is a better word) my computer. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say, I tried to install a certain beta piece of software and it went poorly.
Luckily, since I knew I was doing something risky I backed a few things up ahead of time, but generally speaking, I didn’t need to do that much. Part of this was because of the steps I use to create a consistent workspace also work to backup my data. But not everyone needs a consistent workspace as they may only have one computer, and besides - there is some data that simply doesn’t lend itself well to being synced all that easily.
There’s a few obvious things we should consider first. First, it is of some importance that you the files you need backed up seperate from those that don’t. What I mean by this is you don’t need to back up your copy of Firefox, but you may want your last term paper. I generally follow Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani’s advice, with a few modifications to suit me. I suggest you follow suite. Mac users think of “My Documents” as your home directory for these purposes.
The most obvious thing to do, and perhaps best, is simply to write these directories (once organized) to a DVD at regular intervals. However, I know I find this takes way to much time and I have too many random DVD and CD’s lying around as is.
Secondly, you could also make use of an external drive of some variety - thumbdrives are great for this, though I prefer one giant external drive to accommodate everything (music, media, etc) as most thumbdrives do not have that much storage space. In this situation, I’m simply making sure I always have at least two copies of everything. If my computer hard drive dies, I’m covered, and if the external goes down, I’m also in the clear. The trick here is you generally want to keep things syncing, and not copying things over and over again. Also, one tends to forget regular backups and an automated system works best here.
Thirdly, there is offsite backup. Personally, I think this is a must for certain sorts of files. Keeping your music collection in such a way is a bit unwieldy, but your documents and important files and pictures can certainly be maintained that way. The easiest way to do this is to setup a WebDAV drive and whatever software you’re using to sync your external drive with, you use with this as well. A WebDAV drive is essentially storage space somewhere else that on your computer works just like another drive. If you’re a .Mac user, it’s pretty much just like your iDisk (and if you’re a mac user, you really don’t need a WebDav drive if you have iDisk.) If you don’t have WebDAV drive or access to it, I’d suggest DreamHost.
Now, Dreamhost gets a lot of (well deserved) flack but generally for the limited purpose of a large, almost always up, WebDAV drive, I find it works well enough. For the storage space and price, it’s pretty damn good (and if you use SCHOLASTICIUS as you’re promo code you’ll save about 20 bucks off the monthly price and get a free domain name). Honestly, the only problem I ever had was getting my account setup as they took quite a long time to get it up and running compared to other services I’ve used. And I know it sounds arcane, but setting up a WebDAV drive on both Mac and Windows machines is incredibly easy.
Setting up a WebDAV drive (Windows)
Setting up a WebDAV drive (Mac)
These issues are rather in depth here, and I believe, somewhat outside my purvue. Rather, I’d prefer to point you towards some excellent articles about it.
Automatic Backups (Windows) - Lifehacker
Automatic Backups (Mac) - Lifehacker
Long story short, backup. Personally, I prefer a mix of online and external backup. You can never be too safe, but you can always be sorry.
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