It’s that time of the year again
Despite never having been disastrously hurt by data loss, I’m obsessed to the point of possible compulsion to keep good backups.
At any moment, I typically have all of my pictures, documents, and music backed up—at the very least—in quadruplicate:
- Original copies on my MacBook
- Time Machine backup
- rsync copies on my server
- RARs split across DVDs, which are kept outside of the house
- A select few hyper-important (mostly financially related) files are kept on my Dropbox
I don’t really know why I’m so crazy about this, but I guess this is just part of being anal-retentive. Very few things make me happier than simply being prepared. I’m happy to spend a few hours twice a year making 10 DVDs of all my data, for that eventual “oh crap” that’s going to happen.
Naturally, it will happen the one time I slack on my backup procedures, but that’s Murphy’s Law for you.
Regardless, I strongly advise those of you who are Mac users to pursue getting an external drive or Time Capsule to use with Time Machine, and all of you to pursue some means of regularly backing your data up. I can only speak for myself, but my data is too important to me to lose to laziness.
