I lost my first file to a system crash in the early 1970’s, and have been fanatic about backing up ever since. In that case, backing up meant receiving my data via an acoustic coupler modem and saving it to punched paper tape at 110 bits per second.
The speed of backup devices has increased a billionfold or so since then, but so has the volume of data one needs to back up. I’ve graduated from using paper tape, to a file drawer full of 8” floppy disks, to 5¼” floppy disks, to a tambour-doored chest of 200+ 3½” floppy disks fed one-by-one into a computer, to an RL05 5 MB cartridge hard disk (just spinning up that monster probably used more power than my laptop uses in a month), to external hard drives, to CDs, to DVDs, to SSDs. Oh, I have a backup backup on someone else’s computers (“the cloud”) but that’s entirely secondary. I keep active physical encrypted backups in multiple locations, and I update them regularly. I haven’t needed them often, but it’s always a comfort to know they’re there, and my bacon has been saved more than once.
It remains a time-consuming task. I would guess it now takes around three hours a week, even though I’m retired. Which got me to wondering: is it worth it?
I would have to say yes, even for just the peace of mind and the relatively few disasters averted by having the good backups. But there’s more.
Backup time is time that I’m actively engaged in a productive task, but one that doesn’t take a lot of physical or mental initiative. I get the same vibe from washing dishes. I’m getting things done, but my thoughts are free to wander where they will, and that can be valuable time indeed.
—2p