I remember when we graduated from Mudd there was an idea to possibly have some sort of networked backup server. So that we could all upload important stuff to this server, which was actually all of our personal computers networked together. That way, if one person's machine fried, or one city disappeared in a natural disaster, everyone's stuff would be fine.
Your poll assumed that my computer has data on it that has any value. The worst I would lose is that I would have to rerip my CDs to mp3s... but I use a CD player anyway (because I lost my iPod, but haven't lost my CD player).
I can see that. Despite my elaborate backup system, I wouldn't be actually that upset if it all blew up tomorrow. The only irreplaceable data on my computer are photographs, and most of my favorites have already been printed, or published online.
But I guess I assumed most people have important data somewhere, even if it's on a shared server somewhere (university servers, Google Apps, etc.). Do you have any digital photos? Research papers? Email archives? Creative writing? Financial records?
I only just got my first digital camera, so I'm developing a strategy, but my plan was definitely not to solely keep them on a hard drive... keeping them in multiple online venues of some sort.
My one paper is published. Email archives are both not very important to me and kept elsewhere in the universe, financial records are kept in real paper and online accounts. No real creative writing.
It helps that I don't get attached to many things, and the ones I do are physical objects, not information.
My most important data by far is on Other People's Servers with their own backups and fire extinguishers. I'd be a little miffed if I lost the stuff on my laptop (or my desktop, I suppose, even though I never use it)...but really, most of it's games and diversions. I don't consider most of my creations worth sharing with the world, so I wouldn't be too sad if I lost them, and it'd be fun to make them anew. I'd be far more upset about losing my rather expensive portable portal to the internet. On the optimistic side, I'd probably get more reading done without my internet IV. Maybe I should turn the fan speed down.
P.S. Since some people asked, my backup system consists of:
rsnapshot running on my home server. A cronjob pulls snapshots every few hours from all of my computers and shared host accounts. I keep daily snapshots for four weeks, weekly snapshots for three months, and monthly snapshots for one year.
duplicity for encrypted remote backups to my Dreamhost account. I run this manually about once a month, so I don't need to keep unencrypted keys around. The encrypted key is stashed in a few places, including a paper printout in a safe place. Since Dreamhost doesn't like backups, I might switch to the Amazon S3 backend.
I manually back up files from various online services (Google Calendar, Billmonk, Livejournal), on an irregular basis. Most of these are hard to automate because of the various interfaces and authentication systems. [There's a business opportunity here for someone who can make this easier.]
Much of my home directory is in a git repository. On each machine where I use these files, I push and pull updates from the
( ... )
Comments 9
Whatever happened to that idea?
Reply
Reply
But I guess I assumed most people have important data somewhere, even if it's on a shared server somewhere (university servers, Google Apps, etc.). Do you have any digital photos? Research papers? Email archives? Creative writing? Financial records?
Reply
My one paper is published. Email archives are both not very important to me and kept elsewhere in the universe, financial records are kept in real paper and online accounts. No real creative writing.
It helps that I don't get attached to many things, and the ones I do are physical objects, not information.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment