Brajeshwar

Whoever, whatever you are; if you use a computer, the first and foremost rule you should follow is backup your data all the time! I was out to Bangalore (INDIA) as our team is planning to spread our research wing there. But when I returned to Mumbai, I realized that the Hard Disc of my IBM Thinkpad R51 have crashed!

Well, I didn’t panicked as much as I did about 6 years ago when I lost a whole drive (8GB) of data and everything else in it. I use the Mini Hard Drive 60GB USB 2.0 from iOmega as my primary back-up device for and a secondary 400GB External Drive from Seagate for the overall back-up (this also serves as the back-up of the primary back-up too).

I somehow lost coupla new registration entries which I did during the weekend as the crashed happen between 2 days of back-up schedule (as the login credentials went away with the Keepass database). No e-mails, no project data were lost, nothing critical was lost. E-mails have a back-up on the hosting server for 7 days offset before it goes deleted, and for the project data, subversion from cvsdude.org is the god-send service.

I have been thinking of investing in a 2GB USB 2.0 Mini USB Drive from iOmega or the Pocket Hard Drive from Seagate so that I can have the most critical daily operational datas on them. The iOmega mini drive would be better worn along with a Neck-Chain! Ben Forta blogged about Backup for Workgroups software coupla weeks back.

Lesson learnt

• Whatever, Thou Shall Backup everyday; and Back-up Whenever Your Computer is Free!
• Always have a minimum of 2 parallel Back-ups
• If possible have multiple back-ups at multiple places, just in case natural disaster strikes (Mumbai Flash Flood in India, Katrina in New Orleans)

Ultimate Softwares that come to my rescue

• Keepass from which I could use all my login credentials.
• Bounceback Professional, the standard version would still do fine if you are not looking for versioning back-up and some other features which I never used! BounceBack Express came free with the Seagate 400GB External Drive.

Footnote
* The cost of Disc Space these days is very cheap, thus investing in some good back-up solution will really be a good decision you’ll ever make.
* Call me paranoid, but I suggest always carry a portable back-up even if you have your NoteBook with you.

Request
To my clients, friends and everybody else, if you have mailed me and if the reply is delayed, I am trying to get to my feet with a new Thinkpad R52. I haven’t lost any data and thus will be up sooner than later!