You need only lose most of your life’s work once to learn the hard lesson of backups. We all know that it’s necessary, so I won’t lecture you. Instead, I will recommend the steps I have taken to protect my files and explain what happens when you miss that one little detail.
If you got something that you are changing and constantly tweaking, you really need to use Subversion. It’s what some programmers use to track their daily changes. It adds “versioning” which is the backing up of files as changes are made. These are made in batches called “Commits.” Basically, if you change sixteen files, you apply those changes as batch and then you can roll back any or all of them. This is a trivial client-centric view of a very complicated system, but, if you use Dreamhost like I do, you already have a Subversion server at your finger tips. Then, you just need to worry about the client portion and TortoiseSVN makes it easy to do. I love it because it tracks what files I change, add, etc and checks them in the most optimal fashion.
Granted, I could be using rsync to synchronize my work. Most of my files are binary so I realize I am using subversion stupidly and I rarely need to rollback to an earlier blog post. I am, however, seriously considering LaTeX. Not only does it gain me L33T points, but it stores everything in plain text which would make difference checking oh so much more useful.
If you got several gigs worth of photos and you balk at paying Picasa, Adobe or Flickr for storage, you can have your cake and eat it too. There’s a wonderful little utility called Zenphoto which is a web app that couples FTP uploading with a database and an image gallery. I upload all my photos to a directory on my website and Zenphoto takes care of the rest. It creates galleries that I can then administer, organize and describe. It has even added EXIF support which means I can keep all metadata with the image and then display it to the users. Comments and usage statics and a clean AJAX user interface - what’s not to love? Considering I also have backups on my Network Area Storage (NAS) and my local machine, I have backed up my files, shared them with friends and stayed within my webhosts Appropriate Use Policy (AUP). Most web hosts have clauses in their AUP prohibiting the use of your site for a backup repository. Since my subversion repository protects my writing and my photo application shares my photos, I am taking advantage of a very useful service that I am already paying for.
Finally, get a residential NAS like the My Book World Edition. Think portable hard drive that you set and forget on your network. Mine sits right by router and is accessible by all of my devices (computers, Xbox, PS3, etc). Since it’s running Linux (it’s a very minimal ARM build that I have kludged the hell out of), it’s also running an SSH Server and any utility I care to wire up. With a little work, I could have rsync or a media server or a bit torrent box that frees up my systems resources. The only limitation of the system is the paltry 30 megs of ram, but these little black box (mine’s white and shiny) systems are only supposed to do one thing well, so I don’t mind.
Soon, I will be adding a dumb external drive (the mybook world has a USB 2.0 out) that I will then backup my NAS to. Some crazy folks recommend I disconnect the drive and back it up on a weekly basis, but those are the same fruit cakes who believe lightning can actually damage electronics. That’s what surge protectors are for, right? *wink*
So, I have taken reasonable steps to backup all my essential data. Unfortunately, I had neglected to take reasonable steps with my PDA. To be fair, my Clie was an old reliable dog with about five minutes of battery life. It had become my password generator, since the only app I ever ran was my keychain application. After I rebuilt the computer that hosted all of the backups made during syncs, I never bothered to reinstall the software and recreate the backup. It just sat in the cradle and got dusted when I needed to log into some rarely-used web application.
One day, I needed one of those arcane passwords and I powered up my PDA. For whatever magical reason understood only by Sony, it had decided to reformat itself. It booted up, walked me through the initial setup and displayed the factory applications along with a few of my own old ones. My ebook reader and my Space Trader game were still installed. My password utility, however, had disappeared.
In a flash of my solid state memory stick, I was locked out of the particular system I was trying to access and all of the passwords I would eventually need to ask for. No one likes to ask for passwords and IT folks hate to ask other IT folks to reset their passwords. At the very worst, it warrants a lecture on proper backup practices. At the very best, it warrants a rambling blog post on proper backup practices.
It may strike you as odd that I took tremendous trouble to backup my porn collection and my collection of DnD character sheets, but not my passwords, but I assure you; it is all a matter of priorities. Passwords can be changed, but good luck trying to find some of things I have downloaded over the years.
Do yourself a favor. Create a layered backup strategy that hosts files elsewhere. Make it routine, automatic and mindless. Even better, make it a part of the process. Nothing backups photographs more than uploading to them to your own host where you are free of space concerns. If you make backing up a tedious extra step (like burning to optical media), you will never do it. Just like I never bothered syncing my PDA.