Backups are a tough lesson to learn. I've suffered loss of source code due to:
- finger trouble (saved wrong file on top of another) - more finger trouble (deleted wrong file on NTFS before the existence of undelete for that filesystem) - incorrect implementation (be careful of those recursive-delete-all functions) - hardware failure (at work, hard drive didn't spin up one day and that was the only copy) - stolen laptop
All of those (except the stolen laptop) happened over 15 years ago and it took that many times for me to really appreciate the value of backing stuff up, and understanding all the ways things can go wrong.
I've been using shaback, a solution I developed myself. I've played with Duplicity and it is nice, but I ultimately decided not to use it and I can't remember precisely why.
Oh, and hopefully you used ljdump to back up your LJ entries and comments. :)
Thanks for the update. I don't have nearly as much important digital stuff as you, but I've been slowly acquiring more and more. Right now I have two houses, so I do redundant back-ups by keeping a hard drive with all the important stuff in each place, but that's not very sophisticated and isn't secure at all! I will read with interest your ideas and solutions.
Remember that I'm a command-line junkie, and these are command-line solutions. There are definitely better solutions if one wants a GUI.
The data-in-two-places would've been a fine solution for me. As you said, not secure, but there was security in the systems being all linux. It won't foil any serious hacker, but most serious hackers aren't going to be climbing two walls to get into my house.
I'm going for encryption and online backups now. Transfers by network have always seemed more stable to me than anything else, although my "rugged" USB drive worked like a charm until it decided to go out for a jaunt about town.
Do I remember that you have linux fu, or is that wishful thinking that I'd know a fitness-oriented, Esperanto-speaking woman who's also a linux geek?
My linux-fu has gotten rusty recently, but I do seem to fit that description. :P I still know enough to get around a linux system and have no problems using a command-line interface, though.
Comments 6
- finger trouble (saved wrong file on top of another)
- more finger trouble (deleted wrong file on NTFS before the existence of undelete for that filesystem)
- incorrect implementation (be careful of those recursive-delete-all functions)
- hardware failure (at work, hard drive didn't spin up one day and that was the only copy)
- stolen laptop
All of those (except the stolen laptop) happened over 15 years ago and it took that many times for me to really appreciate the value of backing stuff up, and understanding all the ways things can go wrong.
I've been using shaback, a solution I developed myself. I've played with Duplicity and it is nice, but I ultimately decided not to use it and I can't remember precisely why.
Oh, and hopefully you used ljdump to back up your LJ entries and comments. :)
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The data-in-two-places would've been a fine solution for me. As you said, not secure, but there was security in the systems being all linux. It won't foil any serious hacker, but most serious hackers aren't going to be climbing two walls to get into my house.
I'm going for encryption and online backups now. Transfers by network have always seemed more stable to me than anything else, although my "rugged" USB drive worked like a charm until it decided to go out for a jaunt about town.
Do I remember that you have linux fu, or is that wishful thinking that I'd know a fitness-oriented, Esperanto-speaking woman who's also a linux geek?
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