power of backup

Blog XXI of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

Not a long time back, big computer racks were needed to compute (hold your breath) KILOBYTES of data. Punch cards were used to work with such limited memory. Fast forward to 2005, when I got 40GB disk space in my first computer, my neighbour with ‘only’ 20GB of data burned in jealousy. Back then, data was carried in floppy disks of ~1.4MB and data backup meant either emailing yourself ‘things’ or carrying an army of floppy disks. Soon came CDs but they gave this false sense  of security. Unlike their floppy siblings who cried out aloud every time as if it was their last time, CDs would silently lap up 700MB of data or more and then become unreadable after few weeks of usage or months of storage. Random files would go corrupt rendering a whole heavyweight application unusable, precious pictures would be lost for ever and movies would appear choppy intermittently.

Today with DVDs and mammoth USB HDs, a lifetime of memories in photos, songs, videos and documents can be stashed away in a book shaped device. No surprises then, that Apple named its device Time Capsule. However, it also means that a data calamity that previously could happen only in case of a major fire, flood or earthquake could now happen merely by dropping/misplacing your laptop, or your dog mistaking your disk for a shiny rug or your daughter deciding to use your DVD for her art project.

Few months back, I went through a similar HD crash. Luckily I was prepared. Unluckily I was not fully prepared. While I had been taking regular backups and synchronising stuff online, there was some data that was still lost. As a result, I had to rebuild my music collection from scratch, go to Facebook and Orkut to download some of my photos that were not backed up. Some photos and some licensed softwares were lost for ever. It came as a lesson that one can never be too backed up.

After the crash I made a list of things that one should do as part of backup plan.

• Primary is not backup: If you are using it regularly, it is no longer backup. So your laptop/desktop HD, USB drive, used DVDs do not qualify as backup since they are also susceptible to damage.
• Classify and rule: your data can be classified along three dimensions of relevance, replaceability and updating frequency. Only important or irreplaceable data needs to be backed up. Data that is updated frequently (emails, work files, resume) should be online auto-synchronised (Dropbox, SugarSync, Syncplicity) so that they are backed up as soon as they get changed. Rest of the data can be backed up at regular intervals either online or offline (but note above rule).
• Backup ALL irreplaceable data: I was not fully prepared for my crash because I had skipped out on this chunk of data. Installation setups of licensed softwares, custom playlists, music albums seem like data that are not so important but are not easily replaceable. As a result it took me a long time to restore all my data after a crash.
• File structure image: it is a good idea to create an image of file structure of your hard disks so that during recover stage you can know what all data you had (Use DiskManager).
• Good thing about backing up less: In case everything else fails and data is lost for good, forget it and remember the lesson. A good thing about any crash is that you lose some old junk which you did not need but could never get yourselves to delete.

DISCLAIMER: In above post, I am talking about personal backup. In corporate realm, backup has always been a major concern. Some of the links above are referral links, but I would have recommended them regardless of the referral. Here are the plain links: Dropbox, SugarSync, Syncplicity.