It Happens to the Best of Us
Posted by: J. McMahon on 09/13/2013 10:49 AM
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In a recent post Linus Torvald's (the main force / architect of the linux kernel) announced that the SSD drive in his machine crashed while while working on the latest 3.12 Linux kernel.
I had pushed out _most_ of my pulls today, so realistically I didn't lose a lot of work. However, any people having outstanding pull requests or patches that they expected me to merge that are not in the current tree on git.kernel.org, you may want to re-send the email...."
Actually, what drew me to the post was I had initially misread this line.
"I'll just do the last next days of the merge window on the laptop", and thought Torvald uses a Windows Laptop?!?! Dang, that's news worthy. But alas, no. It was just my lack of coffee.
However, this is a great example that the unexpected can and will happen and great time to remind folks of what we have been preaching for years, "Backups are only slightly less important than your heart beat."
So heading into the weekend, take the opportunity to review what your data backup plans are (if any) and make sure they will be adequate if one of your drives randomly decides to go night-night you don't end up spending hours twitching in a fetal position freaking out about your lost vacation photos. Here's some quick tips that will cost you little to nothing at all for peace of mind.
For those of you looking for a local solution, check out our rather extensive backup section. The paid version of software like Acronis True Image will often give you more power and flexibility, however one of our favorites is a freebie called Macrium Reflect with has a pretty massive feature set. Couple that with a decent external drive and you're in business.
If you are looking for an Offsite / Online solution on the cheap and a gmail account, add Google drive to your account. The software will give you 15 Gig of storage for free.
Google Drive sets up a folder on your machine that you can copy important data to. That data will then sync to the cloud that you can access and share from anywhere pretty much anywhere. You can buy an upgrade in storage if needed however, if you need a tad more space and like that style, head over to DropBox for another free 2 Gig and then to SugarSync for another 5 gig. (Click the 5 gig free account text) That will add a totla of 7 Gig and also give you a look at the features others companies are providing.
Looking or a paid online solution without Google Plus being jammed into your lifestyle? Here's two:
- Malwarebytes Secure Backup, a very secure online backup system that also scans your backups for malware. 50 Gig of backup will cost you $29.99 per year, and it goes up from there.
- Just Cloud starts at $4.95 per month but has an unlimited model for home users for as little as $6.95 per month. Just Cloud offers the ability to back up Android and iOS devices as well, which is handy
Hopefully, that's enough to get you going and thinking about a backup plan. Remember, if data loss can happen to The Geek of all Geeks, Mr. Torvald, it can happen to you.
I had pushed out _most_ of my pulls today, so realistically I didn't lose a lot of work. However, any people having outstanding pull requests or patches that they expected me to merge that are not in the current tree on git.kernel.org, you may want to re-send the email...."
Actually, what drew me to the post was I had initially misread this line.
"I'll just do the last next days of the merge window on the laptop", and thought Torvald uses a Windows Laptop?!?! Dang, that's news worthy. But alas, no. It was just my lack of coffee.
However, this is a great example that the unexpected can and will happen and great time to remind folks of what we have been preaching for years, "Backups are only slightly less important than your heart beat."
So heading into the weekend, take the opportunity to review what your data backup plans are (if any) and make sure they will be adequate if one of your drives randomly decides to go night-night you don't end up spending hours twitching in a fetal position freaking out about your lost vacation photos. Here's some quick tips that will cost you little to nothing at all for peace of mind.
For those of you looking for a local solution, check out our rather extensive backup section. The paid version of software like Acronis True Image will often give you more power and flexibility, however one of our favorites is a freebie called Macrium Reflect with has a pretty massive feature set. Couple that with a decent external drive and you're in business.
If you are looking for an Offsite / Online solution on the cheap and a gmail account, add Google drive to your account. The software will give you 15 Gig of storage for free.
Google Drive sets up a folder on your machine that you can copy important data to. That data will then sync to the cloud that you can access and share from anywhere pretty much anywhere. You can buy an upgrade in storage if needed however, if you need a tad more space and like that style, head over to DropBox for another free 2 Gig and then to SugarSync for another 5 gig. (Click the 5 gig free account text) That will add a totla of 7 Gig and also give you a look at the features others companies are providing.
Looking or a paid online solution without Google Plus being jammed into your lifestyle? Here's two:
- Malwarebytes Secure Backup, a very secure online backup system that also scans your backups for malware. 50 Gig of backup will cost you $29.99 per year, and it goes up from there.
- Just Cloud starts at $4.95 per month but has an unlimited model for home users for as little as $6.95 per month. Just Cloud offers the ability to back up Android and iOS devices as well, which is handy
Hopefully, that's enough to get you going and thinking about a backup plan. Remember, if data loss can happen to The Geek of all Geeks, Mr. Torvald, it can happen to you.
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