My Backup Strategy
My laptop has two internal hard disks. A 320GB traditional hard disk drive, and a 60GB solid state disk drive.The OS and applications exist on the latter, my home folder on the former.
Local Backup — Both drives backup nightly using SuperDuper to a local hard disk connected via USB. This clip from Dan Benjamin and John Siracusa’s new podcast Hypercritical captures why I trust SuperDuper! more than any other piece of software I own.
Essential Files and Pictures — Essential files are all of my documents and JPEGs of all of my pictures. These are all stored in a paid Dropbox account, which gives me online backup, versioning, and access from any computer anywhere (referral link). (In addition these files are backed up locally as seen in number one).
RAW Photos — I shoot in RAW, which takes up considerable space. Once RAWs are processed and exported as JPEGs to my Dropbox, I move the originals to an external drive that is backed up immediately to an identical drive. These files are not currently stored in an additional offsite location, and is the biggest current hole in my backup strategy. That said, at worst I have JPEGs stored on my main computer, main local backup, and on Dropbox.
Music — My MP3 collection is stored on my computer, which means it is backed up locally. The full collection also exists on my old iBook, which is connected to the TV and has its own local backup. Finally, the vast majority of my MP3s are backed up on Amazon’s S3 service. That said, I am too lax in keeping this updated.
Here is a visual representation:
This may sound and or look complicated, but in reality its quite easy to keep updated. The first key is Dropbox: it backs up everything I do instantly. It’s awesome. The main effort on my part is plugging in an external drive each night before I go to sleep. SuperDuper takes care of the rest. In return for this small amount of effort, I get the following benefits:
1) Local, bootable backups of every file on my computer. In the event of a hard drive failure, I can be back up and running in less than two minutes (Mac OS X can boot off of external drives, but it would be trivial to install my backup drive into my MacBook Pro).
2) Cloud-based, up-to-the-second backup of every file that matters to me, with versioning. It is difficult to overstate how wonderful Dropbox is. The practical effect is that I can be up-and-running on any computer in the world in less than 15 minutes.
3) Local and cloud-based backup of my media, and local backup of my original RAW files.
So why go to the effort? Those who have lost data know why. In March 2005 I tipped over in my chair and my then-brand new iBook hit the floor, destroying the hard drive. I lost all of the data I had accumulated in the three months since I had bought it. From that day on I swore never again.
Data loss is not a matter of maybe, it is a matter of when. Backing up should not be optional; the massive convenience that comes from having all of my files available everywhere is simply a happy side effect.
