Les Jones

Tech > Doing the Backup Thing

The last two nights I've done some backup work.

Last night in Apple iTunes it was File | Backup to Disk. That was 5 DVDs of MP3 data. I still need to grab 500 songs off of my wife's laptop when she's not using it.

Tonight in Google Picasa it was Tools | Backup Pictures for 8 DVDs of picture and video data.

All of the DVDs are going off-site. I also have a spare 60 GB hard drive that gets plugged into a USB enclosure periodically to back up everything in My Documents. That drive also gets taken offsite.

Onsite there's a 320GB USB/Firewire drive for more frequent backups. I'm finally starting to feel good about our backup strategy. The DVD burner on the new PC helped, as did making a new hard drive on the new desktop PC our primary storage device. We dodged some bullets the last couple of years when we relied only on our increasingly-old laptops that our toddlers routinely body-slammed onto the wood floors. New desktop + onsite backup + multiple offsite backups = peace of mind.