I was watching a mailing-list discussion of backup software, and how often you should back up, and based on some decades’ experience, found some of the thinking sloppy. Here are my life lessons on keeping your data safe while assuming that The Worst Will Happen. Some of it is Macintosh-specific, but there may be useful take-aways even from those parts, even for non-Mac-hacks…
This is a truly, truly useful guide to keeping your data safe.
It was just about a year ago that I bought the Macintosh I’m typing this on now because my Thinkpad died on me, and decided that from now on I will only store my data in formats that are open and documented. A big thank you to Brian R. for convincing me to do this.
And yes, I now back up my data 2x a day in 3 different places. As the article above says, I’ve done stupid stuff and deleted files that I need (like deleting my calendar yesterday by accident trying to fix a problem with another program.) The backups that I keep mean that I only have to panic for a minute or so.
(Via ongoing.)
