I'm just a regular schmo, in his late 20s, living on the east coast of the US.
Here you'll find random findings from around the Internet, with a few original items sprinkled in.
If you'd like, you can read about my journey into buying a Mac.
I am also embarking on a project to take one picture a day (or so) until I hit 365.
I can be contacted via e-mail via the username casey at this domain.
Life.
It’s that time of year, when I make physical copies of all my data, as a worst-case backup. It’s somewhat eerie to think my entire life, in essence, is stored on those 7 discs. In that ~50 GiB is my entire world.
But is it?
My marriage may be documented on those discs, but it isn’t in them. My family, my friends, my work, the same. Those discs just hold relics—reminders, perhaps. As important as they may be, they aren’t important at all.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that.
I took a few hundred pictures in late April at a family event for someone else, wherein I only wanted to keep a handful. I burned the entirety of them to CD or DVD, and then deleted the rest.
I wanted to do something with all of the pictures today, but I couldn’t find the CD I burned. Luckily, I have a pretty standard workflow, and I used Time Machine to find my Incoming folder from shortly after the event. Sure enough, there were all of my files, ready and waiting for me.
Effort to back up the files: zero.
Effort to recover the files: 5 minutes.
Seriously kids, if you own a Mac and do not use Time Machine, you’re doing yourself (and your data) a disservice. Back up your data.
Today marks the one year anniversary of my Time Machine backups. Yes, this is a ridiculously geeky thing to take note of, but is it? Imagine how awesome it is to know that you can get to files you deleted a year ago within 5 minutes.
Remember kids, backups are never a bad thing.
Let me say it again.
Backup.
Backup your computer.
Backup your photos.
Backup your files.
Backup your email.
If it doesn’t exist in at least two places it doesn’t exist.*
*And if it’s really, really, really critical, back it up in two places and a third off-site.
I cannot stress this enough, BACK UP YOUR FILES!
Because when, not if, your hard drive crashes.
Your child spills juice on your laptop.
You knock your coffee onto the desk and your laptop.
You drop your laptop.
Or the eventuality of a hard drive having moving parts and eventually it will die occurs.
Your. Files. Are. Gone!
Recovery is very expensive! Often costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars with zero guarantee of recovery of anything!
So please, just backup.
If you’re on a Mac, use Time Machine or the superb SuperDuper!
If you’re on Windows, use Second Copy (free trial) or Sync Back (Free, look for it on the page).
If you’re on Linux you should know enough to backup already.
Reblogged because this really can’t be said often enough. I always have all of my important files in triplicate, make DVDs that I take offsite every 6 months (that makes a 4th copy), and really important files like financial data is also synchronized with Dropbox instantly, making a 5th copy.
