Rarely are we fully prepared to handle a disaster, no matter what category it falls into. About two months ago, the hard drive in my Powerbook died. It just stopped booting the computer. There was no warning. There was no signal of its imminent demise. I could do nothing but hope that my backups were current.
What is important when preparing a Back-Up?
When preparing a back-up solution, you have to consider what is important and what is not. There are three categories of "things" on computers - applications, settings, and data - and each takes a different priority in my backup plan.
Applications: I do not care to backup my applications since each can be reinstalled when necessary. That part is easy. Recovering settings and data is more complex.
Settings: Some settings are easy to replace and some take a lot of work. For example, the settings for how the desktop looks are easy to get back. The settings for things like my GNUpg (email encryption software) and Keychain (password keeper) are more important because they take a lot of work to setup in the first place.
Data: Almost all of the data is important and backing it up is vital. Unlike settings, once data is gone, it's gone forever.
Where do I store a Back-Up?
I have backups of my computer settings and data in multiple locations. Why multiple locations? You never know what might happen to the physical location where your backup is stored - fire, flood, or other disaster. Whether your backup is on another computer or on a collection of CDs and DVDs, it's important to keep redundant copies of your backup in different locations.
Settings: The settings that I want to keep for backup are stored at my .mac account. Settings do not take up much space, so it's fast and easy to use a .mac account for these files. Once a month or more, I copy these important settings into a folder named by the date of backup, compress the folder to save space, and copy it to my .mac account.
Data: The data is the real meat of any backup. Usually there are irreplaceable documents, photos, and other files you won't want to do without. (I have term papers from high school created in the OLD AppleWorks on my hard drive. I would hate to lose those files or any of the files I have decided are important.) For this reason I take a two-layer approach to backing up this data. First, I make a DVD of my documents and important data regularly, usually once a month. Second, I copy all of my documents and data to other computers - some at work for work documents and some at my house for personal documents. I do this as often as any of data changes. When my computer failed, it had been almost a month since I had done a DVD, so I was sure glad I had been keeping up with the copies! By far the biggest chunk of my data is the music from my iTunes Library. This backup is done for me automatically - it is all on my iPod, which was a relief when restoring my PowerBook. I did not want to have to rip all of my CDs again or lose the music I purchased from the iTunes Music Store!
My recovery experience probably differs from that of most other people and I'll tell you why. I look at this process as a good thing. Here was a chance for me to start fresh, to clean out some of the dead wood in my system. When I got the computer back from service, I wiped the drive and performed a clean install of the latest version of the operating system. I configured my user and installed only the applications I knew I needed. Of course, over time my Applications folder will grow again, but I have used this reinstall to find out which applications are really important and which ones are no longer useful for me.
After the process of restoring my computer, I was missing only a few things - some settings that I had made just before my machine crashed along with some applications I recently installed. Because I did not have a complete copy of my system, there were some items that escaped my backups. For example, I did not know to make a backup of the Applications Support folder in /User/[my username]/Library. Many applications; including FireFox, GarageBand, and iCal; store files in the Application Support folder. So, I lost my bookmarks and some application data that will not be easy to replace.
What can be learned from this experience?
1. Backup more often! Once a month is not enough.
2. There are some files to add to the list that I keep on my .mac account.
3. Even if you take REALLY good care of a computer, the hard drive WILL die. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when. Being prepared with a good set of backups keeps a bad day from turning into a truly awful day.
If you need assistance preparing backup plan for your computer systems, contact Pelarious for help.
