Backups

This is part of a series of reprints from my classes. Once the class is over, I will lose these if I don't save them elsewhere. I've decided to post them here as they may be of some interest. This is from my Introduction to Information Systems class, which I was too lazy to test out of.

I don't backup my computer, per se, so much as I backup important content. Things like photos, videos, and documents I replicate between multiple computers. As much as reasonable I try to also put these files into the cloud using one service or another. For instance: many of my photos are on multiple computers, uploaded to Picasa web, and also uploaded to Facebook. I store almost all of my documents in my Dropbox account, which stores the documents on their servers and automatically replicates them to multiple computers.

I admit that this is not an entirely adequate backup solution, but it's worked quite well so far. Two years ago my laptop died. I was able to recover the hard disk from it, only to find that I didn't need any of the data off of it. Last year the hard disk in my wife's computer died and almost nothing was lost. Even though I've been fairly lucky, I am working to rectify the situation with some more formalized and complete backups.

At work I save everything onto network storage which is backed up using NetApp's SnapVault.