Save your computer to back-up your ass

The other day the strap on my computer back pack broke while I was out at one of my ‘offices’ (a cafe near the beach that does a particularly good espresso), and it dropped from shoulder height and hit the ground.

Yes, it had my Macbook Pro in it.

The Macbook got a nice dent right over where I know the hard drive is located.  The first thought to run through my mind was, “when was the last back-up”?

Fortunately for me, I own a Macbook Pro and that little baby didn’t miss a beat – despite landing right on it’s edge.  I got the geniuses at Apple to check it out and all’s good.

But.  Imagine if it had not been ‘all good’.  Imagine if I didn’t have a back-up in place.  It would have been all over.

I read about a woman the other day whose laptop was stolen from the back of her car while she ‘just went into get some milk at a shop’, and she lost three years of work on the ‘parenting home study course’ she had been developing.  She had no back up.

Then I was talking to a mate of mine who I’m in business with and he admitted to having no back up either.  Crikey.

Given that we’ve got some incredibly valuable video footage and a business that we’re launching internationally, the topic of  computer back-ups dominated my thoughts for a few days – he was concerned too, and sent me a blog post on best practices for backing up your computer.  I checked my own system against their recommendations and I scored fairly well – but fell short of the complete paranoia that they recommend – so I went shopping as I explain below.

Here’s what I’ve got (and what I recommend that you do instantly if you don’t have this going on already)

1. My Macbook automatically backs-up to my time capsule (an Apple hard drive) – every hour on the hour.  It backs up my entire computer, so if it had developed rigor mortis after I’d dropped it the other day, I could have had my entire system up and running again within a few hours (and after buying a new mac book).  But is one back-up enough?  Nup – because what happens if the back-up fails.
2. So, I have another hard drive that I manually back up to ‘each week’ – although, I’d missed a few weeks.  So, now I’ve entered a recurring reminder into my iPhone so that I wont forget.  The hard drive uses firewire 800, so it’s very fast – and runs in the background while I’m doing other stuff.  The potential drama here is that because this hard drive is in the same location as my time capsule, if I was robbed – or if the house burned down – or if I lost my entire cafe latte over both at the same time – then I’d be screwed.
3. So, today I bought another 2 hard drives – 500GB and around $200 each  I will back-up my entire computer to those as well – and keep one in a different location in my house – and one in an entirely different location off-site.
4. And then there’s this cracker of a service.  For literally cents per day, my entire computer is automatically backed-up to a data storage center.  And it keeps 30 days worth of back-ups, which means you can go back 30 days to retrieve stuff if you have to.  The concern here is ‘security’.  I can’t advise you on this – it’s your call.  I’m more concerned about loosing my stuff than I am about someone cracking the military-grade security that they use to protect my stuff.  It’s the piece of mind I get knowing that if anything happened I could have my entire system up again fast – including all my applications, files, keychains, photos, videos, emails, websites – all of it – completely restored onto a computer in a short time.

So, what do I think you should do?  The cheapest and most automated solution is to use the data storage and back-up service offered by mozy. Next is a coupla 500GB hard drives and a routine system for backing up.  The more expensive but automated system is to get a mac, use the time-machine function in the MAC OS X coupled with a huge hard drive like the Apple time capsule.

By the way – what did you think of the title of this post?  I had a little chuckle to myself when I thought of moving around the words.  It was originally going to be “back up your computer to save your ass”.  Maybe you didn’t like me using the word ‘ass’?  What ever the case, leave me a comment – I’m all ears to people who follow my stuff and your comments inspire me to write more.

Oh – and one of the main reasons I need to back up my computer so thoroughly is because I run my businesses from a single laptop while I hang out at cafes and beaches.  I used have to turn up to the same place day after day – tolerate committee meetings, administrivia, peak hour traffic, etc.  If you’re interested to find out how I changed everything, then grab a copy of my comprehensive and UN-corporate guide to online business … it’s a blast … you just need to tell me where to send it.  Enter your email address at the top of this page to get instant access.

Tagged as: back-up, nic lucas, productivity