I just got called a moron by @Vyder for being obsessive about backing up my data. When really, I'm just someone who considers their data irreplaceable, and take every measure to ensure against its loss. Some people think I go too far, but I'll explain briefly why its far from crazy to have several backup strategies in place.
Here, I'm assuming that your data is actually important. Being a photographer, designer, and avid music aficionado, if I lose my data, I really don't know what I'll do. But, I know what I'm doing to make sure that can never happen.
One misconception is that backing up to an external hard drive is all you need. Wrong. Sure, thats a great start, but sorry, one external hard drive, it will save you, for the most part, but you're not totally safe. There are several ways you can lose all your data, even if you have it backed up on an external hard drive (This is assuming your computer is mirrored exactly on your drive. Never leave any data on your external which isn't mirrored on another drive. Thats just stupid) :
- The drive gets stolen along with the laptop/computer (Easy. Especially if you have a portable drive.)
- The drive fails (Oh, hi there, drives fail. All the time. I mean, all - the - time. Drives are built with a life expectancy. The manufacturer knows its eventually going to fail. You should too.)
- Fire/water damage, natural disasters that aren't preventable, if your laptop is in your room, and your drive too, schabhang ouchie gone.
- Electricity fluctuation. Drives connected to a power source can fry during lightning strikes, just like anything else (even with a spike guard, mind you)
- And several other far-out-of-this-world things that you think can never happen to you, until it does.
(Side note : I highly recommend
SuperDuper! for a neat exact-copy bootable clone of your computer)
What I'm getting at is you need a secure off-site backup which absolutely can't fail you. You could keep your external drive somewhere else. Fine. Its painful, you won't update it regularly, and that 'somewhere else' is prone to all the same things it would have been if it was with you anyways. You might want to encrypt the drives (computer + external) if you have extremely sensitive information. Filevault for Mac (built in) and
TrueCrypt for Windows. Personally I don't bother with the encryption because it slows things down and isn't really necessary in my eyes.
This is why I shell out $5/month for an online automatic off-site secure unlimited backup. Currently, I'm with
Mozy Backblaze, but there are several other great services like Mozy (which you should never use because they're one of the worst companies I've had to deal with in my lifetime - they suck, period) and
Carbonite. Its pretty much the last thing you have to do to insure your data. Everything is encrypted, sent across to them, and stored securely in their data centers. Mozy's datacenters are protected against earthquakes, even.
Not only is it your fail-safe backup, but now your data is accessible anywhere. You have access to your entire computer anywhere you have an internet connection. So if something does fail while traveling, you still can get your data back without much of a fuss.
Furthermore, accidental file deletion, covered. It has happened to me, where I've actually mistakenly gotten rid of quite important files and folders accidentally. Most of the backup services I mentioned (Mozy I know for sure) will keep a backed up file for 30 days after you delete it from your computer. So you can retrieve it pretty much instantly, anywhere you are. These services also back up external drives, so you can use your external as additional storage instead of a dedicated backup drive.
There are a ton of benefits to online off-site backup, and as you can see I'm a strong advocate of them. Its quite unfortunate when I hear of people (even fellow photographers here) who drop their external drives (somehow, strange) and lose all of their data because they don't mirror it or back it up elsewhere (again, don't leave standalone un-mirrored data on external drives).
People don't take backing up seriously enough and most of them will end up paying for it one way or the other, eventually. Put yourself in that situation - all your music, gone. Photos, gone. Games, applications, documents, college work, all gone, and what do you know, the external drive is dead.
