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Really. A Time Machine saved my rear end yesterday -- Time Machine being Apple's back-up app that is part of the Leopard (10.5) system software.
Do I back-up? Of course I do. I've learned that lesson the hard way. I keep copies of the same files on my home hard drive, on a thumb drive, and on my computer at school. Triple redundancy.
But not foolproof redundancy. Unfortunately sometimes a back-up plan can be foiled by sheer user stupidity...
Y'see, I use a thumb (USB) drive to move files from my home computer to the one at NKU and back again, those files being altered in both places. Usually I'm moving two folders: one that contains my fiction (including the work-in-progress) and one that contains all my stuff for teaching. Both of those folders, naturally, are under constant revision.
So I put the thumb drive in the home computer on Wednesday morning before I headed down to school, and I did a stupid thing. Rather than moving the (newer) files from the hard drive on the computer to the thumb drive, I did the opposite: I sent the (old) files from the thumb drive to the hard drive.
I noticed the mistake almost immediately. I then (stupidly) compounded the mistake by stopping the copying process. I checked a couple of the files in the folder to make sure they were still there, and (even more stupidly) assumed I'd stopped things before anything dire had happened. So I proceeded to copy the stuff in the right direction: from the hard drive to the thumb drive. I headed on to school.
At NKU, I popped the thumb drive into the computer there and (really, really stupidly) copied the folders onto that computer. Then I went to open up the presentation for the first class that day.
It wasn't there. In fact, in the "Teaching Stuff" folder, there wasn't a sub-folder for "Presentations", as there should have been. It was gone. Entirely. All the class presentations I'd put together over the last four years were... gone. Every last one of them, for all the classes I teach. I quickly checked the "Writing" folder. Guess what... now that I was looking at everything, I noticed there were a few folders missing there, too... My WIP existed (that was what I'd checked for at home), but some of the older novels had vanished.
Now I was panicked. I could figure out what had happened: in canceling that first (stupid) transfer from the thumb drive to the hard drive, the system had already wiped out a couple sub-folders in preparation for the transfer. Then -- because I hadn't checked everything -- I then cemented that now-crippled version of the folders by copying them from the hard drive to the thumb, then had made it even worse by copying the crippled folders from the thumb to the hard drive at school. I'd managed to ensure that I had nothing but crippled folders everywhere. I had only incomplete versions of the two most important folders on both computers and the thumb drive.
Triple Dunce-ity. I had this terrible sick feeling in my stomach. Four years of work putting together class presentations and lesson plans gone. Novels gone.
But... I'd used some Xmas money this year to buy a hard drive, and I'd started using Time Machine to back up the home computer. What Time Machine does is retain a snapshot of the computer every hour for the last 24, every day for the last thirty, and a once-a-week snapshot beyond that. Clicking on the Time Machine app, you can step back in time and see your computer in an older state.
I drove home, since I had time to do that before the first class. I kicked up Time Machine. I went back to the hour before I'd made the fatal mistake. I selected the "Writing" folder and the "Teaching Stuff" folder, and clicked the "Restore" button at the bottom of the screen. Time Machine confirmed the choice and a few moments later, those versions of the folders replaced the crippled ones on my hard drive. The "Presentations" folder and the missing novels in my "Writing" folder had returned. I copied them (carefully) to my thumb drive. Drove back to NKU. Transferred from the thumb to the computer there. Voila!. Disaster averted. I can now easily bore students once again.
So -- if you don't have a back-up plan of some sort, make sure you start one. Now. You do back-up, don't you?
Do I back-up? Of course I do. I've learned that lesson the hard way. I keep copies of the same files on my home hard drive, on a thumb drive, and on my computer at school. Triple redundancy.
But not foolproof redundancy. Unfortunately sometimes a back-up plan can be foiled by sheer user stupidity...
Y'see, I use a thumb (USB) drive to move files from my home computer to the one at NKU and back again, those files being altered in both places. Usually I'm moving two folders: one that contains my fiction (including the work-in-progress) and one that contains all my stuff for teaching. Both of those folders, naturally, are under constant revision.
So I put the thumb drive in the home computer on Wednesday morning before I headed down to school, and I did a stupid thing. Rather than moving the (newer) files from the hard drive on the computer to the thumb drive, I did the opposite: I sent the (old) files from the thumb drive to the hard drive.
I noticed the mistake almost immediately. I then (stupidly) compounded the mistake by stopping the copying process. I checked a couple of the files in the folder to make sure they were still there, and (even more stupidly) assumed I'd stopped things before anything dire had happened. So I proceeded to copy the stuff in the right direction: from the hard drive to the thumb drive. I headed on to school.
At NKU, I popped the thumb drive into the computer there and (really, really stupidly) copied the folders onto that computer. Then I went to open up the presentation for the first class that day.
It wasn't there. In fact, in the "Teaching Stuff" folder, there wasn't a sub-folder for "Presentations", as there should have been. It was gone. Entirely. All the class presentations I'd put together over the last four years were... gone. Every last one of them, for all the classes I teach. I quickly checked the "Writing" folder. Guess what... now that I was looking at everything, I noticed there were a few folders missing there, too... My WIP existed (that was what I'd checked for at home), but some of the older novels had vanished.
Now I was panicked. I could figure out what had happened: in canceling that first (stupid) transfer from the thumb drive to the hard drive, the system had already wiped out a couple sub-folders in preparation for the transfer. Then -- because I hadn't checked everything -- I then cemented that now-crippled version of the folders by copying them from the hard drive to the thumb, then had made it even worse by copying the crippled folders from the thumb to the hard drive at school. I'd managed to ensure that I had nothing but crippled folders everywhere. I had only incomplete versions of the two most important folders on both computers and the thumb drive.
Triple Dunce-ity. I had this terrible sick feeling in my stomach. Four years of work putting together class presentations and lesson plans gone. Novels gone.
But... I'd used some Xmas money this year to buy a hard drive, and I'd started using Time Machine to back up the home computer. What Time Machine does is retain a snapshot of the computer every hour for the last 24, every day for the last thirty, and a once-a-week snapshot beyond that. Clicking on the Time Machine app, you can step back in time and see your computer in an older state.
I drove home, since I had time to do that before the first class. I kicked up Time Machine. I went back to the hour before I'd made the fatal mistake. I selected the "Writing" folder and the "Teaching Stuff" folder, and clicked the "Restore" button at the bottom of the screen. Time Machine confirmed the choice and a few moments later, those versions of the folders replaced the crippled ones on my hard drive. The "Presentations" folder and the missing novels in my "Writing" folder had returned. I copied them (carefully) to my thumb drive. Drove back to NKU. Transferred from the thumb to the computer there. Voila!. Disaster averted. I can now easily bore students once again.
So -- if you don't have a back-up plan of some sort, make sure you start one. Now. You do back-up, don't you?
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(I also sometimes email myself files. It's a great way to save another redundant copy in the "Sent" folder, and again in my Inbox at the same time.)
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Dedicated back-up programs just back-up when they're programmed to do so, whether you're there or not. I'm now a fan of that! :-)
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...plus Gmail has a great search feature for old/archived emails. Very easy to find what you're looking for.
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I do like the idea of a dedicated backup program, but it's another expense that I just can't handle right now - if I was going to buy software it would be Acrobat (damn $300 programs!!!)
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Other thumb-drives are apparently shiny mouses without tails, just as much toys. I find them all over, months after I needed them urgently.
I amuse myself by thinking that the new external hard-drive is too heavy even to be pushed off the desk. Ho ho ho.
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From: (Anonymous)
Human Factors
I do daily backups to a thumb drive, burn weekly(ish) backups to a disk, and my rock-bottom-worst-case-scenario backup is a burned disk sitting in the safety deposit box at my bank. I hope that will save me from virtually any catastrophe caused by my own carelessness. (But it won't save me in case of a meteor strike or nuclear holocaust).
When backing up to the thumb drive, I have developed a "human factors" approach that, while stupidly simple, has actually saved me more than once. I have an unbreakable rule: the "from" folder window has to be situated at the upper right corner of the screen, and the "to" folder window has to be situated at the lower left corner of the screen. Sounds dumb, I know, but by internalizing that as a hard-and-fast rule, it has saved me from going on autopilot and accidentally copying things in the wrong direction.
This procedures-based safety check is a habit I've developed via my day job, where my absent-mindedness could cause a VERY BIG problem should I accidentally take, say, my cell phone or iPod to work. I know that in my personal life I own 4 electronic devices that are forbidden at work: cell phone, iPod, and 2 thumb drives. One of the last things I do before leaving for work in the morning is to physically touch each object and count them off: "One, two, three, four." I know it sounds dumb, but it really works. It saved me on one occasion, when I still had my cell phone in my satchel on the morning after a vacation.
Yes, I'm overly obsessed with this stuff. But I really don't want to go to prison.
Ian