-Scott

Chris

Don’t be too confident in DVD!

Most people have this false sense of security around the data stored on their HD’s

One thing that I always try to get into my friends heads:
If you just want to do 1 thing, store one copy of what you really don’t want to lose (on a DVD, 2nd external drive, whatever) at somebody else’s place.

If your house burns down, your DVD-archive stored in your basement will be worthless.

You do not have a true fall-back scenario if any one event (HD crash, fire, flood, burglary, etc) can destoy all your copies.

My structure:
1) running Timemachine on OSX for the “local HD failure”
2) regular incremental backup to external HD which normally resides at parents-in-law house 5 miles away
3) mirror of my picture folder to my brothers server 80 miles away (process running automatically at night over the internet)

But I’d be happy if everone would just perform point 2) once a year.

This morning I read an interesting blog post from Terry White, director North America Creative Pro Core Business for Adobe Systems Inc., on his recent troubles and on how his multitude of backups saved the day. Terry White’s backup system is more elaborate then mine but as you will see in his article we share the same basic philosophy: “Any device will fail sooner or later. Make multiple backups to reduce your risk of total disaster.”

For more expert advice on backup systems please click here.