My Brief History of Backups

I am always surprised that many of my fellow freelancers do not bother to back up their computers. (Most do, but a lot do not.) I have always been a fan of backing up my files. And although I have not had to rely on it often, when I did, I was really glad to have those duplicate files somewhere safe and sound, and easy to access.

Early on, as I worked away, I would throw my in-progress documents onto a spare 3½-inch floppy at the end of the day (or the end of the night—since I was usually someplace off site during the day and working at home in the evening). It wasn’t a perfect arrangement. I didn’t back-up my entire computer (no applications, no system folder), but, way back when, rebuilding my OS and reinstalling applications was no big deal. If needed, I could reload pretty much everything (which I did on occasion) from a set of neatly labeled diskettes that I kept stored in two matching Fellowes filing boxes.

And that was pretty much how I continued for a good long time. I eventually graduated to SyQuest drives (first the 44s, then the 88s). SyQuest drives may have been big and clunky (and expensive), but they held a ton more than a floppy. And with file sizes getting bigger and bigger more storage capacity became increasingly more important. Then along came the Zip drive. Smaller and cheaper than the SyQuest, it quickly became the storage of choice for pretty much everyone. Zip drives had a good run. They were great for archiving and super easy to use for transferring files. I liked my SyQuests, but I loved my Zips. (Before I finally got rid of my last computer with a SCSI interface, I systematically went through all my Zip drives and pulled off any relevant archives and then Freecycled the disks. No one wanted the SyQuest drives and they went into the trash.)

Now for backups, I am using Apple’s Time Machine (which I know is not perfect, but it has saved me more than once—like when my computer died this past December and I was able to use Time Machine to transfer everything—no, really everything—over to my new machine between Sunday dinner and Monday breakfast). For good measure, I also have a new, separate external hard drive containing a backup created weekly by Carbon Copy Cloner. For an addition level of safety, if needed, I can restart my computer from the CCC backup.

And these days, I am backing up my entire system, because at this point there is no longer a set of neatly labeled diskettes that I can use to recreate my system. Yes, my OS and applications all live somewhere out there in the universe (or cloud), but I like knowing that in a pinch they also live a bit closer to home—like on a hard drive just a few feet away.