This short blog post is about a backup issue I had that was a wake up call for me.
The stressful experience
I was caught unprepared, as my laptop hard drive experienced problems, and my first thought was, I’ve not recently made a backup. Luckily I managed to gain access to my important work files, and make a backup, but it was a close call.
I have the hardware, but I’m not using it properly
I do have a NAS box, but it is old and sounds like a jumbo jet taking off, so at some stage I need to invest in a new NAS box and at least two hard drives to perform ‘raid’. i.e. backup to both drives. Then I should automate as much backup processes as possible to the NAS, probably via Wi-Fi.
In the meantime I’m going to use an external hard drive, which I plan on leaving connected to my laptop when not out and about. Then use the free ‘Cobain’ software, to automate some of the backup processes. I also use Dropbox for some files, Google Docs and Xmarks (bookmark backup and sync).
I also need to put in place some more robust off-site backup solutions soon, but for now I should be doing more backups with the current hardware and services I already use.
Conclusion
I am lucky, in the fact that if the hard drive had died, I have a replacement hard drive I can use, and if the laptop dies, I’ve got another computer I can use. However not having a backup of recent email and various files, would of left me in a situation, so I need to be more careful.