On the Importance of Backups

We often assume bad things mostly happen to other people -- that is, until they happen to us. But a more realistic approach to risk has immense practical benefits. Consider, as a completely hypothetical example, the data on your personal computer. We all know in theory that hard drives fail. But they mostly belong to other people, so we don't worry too much about our own, even if it has 5 years of digital photos and 90% of the next Pulitzer-winning novel on it.

Last week, the drive in my laptop failed completely with no warning at all. Since I carefully maintained regular backups on an external, bootable FireWire drive, I was able to install a new drive and recover all my data with minimal difficulty.

We've mentioned the importance of data backup before, because you just never know when disaster will strike. And as more and more elements of our lives are stored digitally, the failure of a 2.5-inch hard drive can seem nearly as catastrophic as a house fire. Without a good backup, I could have lost this photo taken from the Mont Blanc, and since I don't go to 12,000 feet every day, it might have taken a while to replace.

However, the backup was a week old -- and for a Web developer, a week of code is not something you want to lose. Happily, all the projects I work with on the laptop are also under version control with Subversion, so that missing code was easily restored in about 30 seconds.

What could have been an absolute catastrophe was averted by just a little bit of risk management. If you aren't making regular backups, start now. You never know how glad you'll be to have them until your drive starts making that little clicking sound that means it's now an expensive paperweight.