# Thou shall back-up everyday

> Markdown version of https://brajeshwar.com/2005/thou-shall-back-up-everyday/ — 2005-09-12

Whoever, whatever you are; if you use a computer, the first and foremost rule you should follow is *backup* your data all the time! I was out to Bangalore (INDIA) as our team is planning to spread our research wing there. But when I returned to Bombay, I realized that the Hard Disc of my IBM ThinkPad R51 have crashed!

Well, I didn't panicked as much as I did about 6 years ago when I lost a whole drive (8GB) of data and everything else in it. I use the *Mini Hard Drive 60GB USB 2.0* from [iOmega](http://www.iomega.com/) as my primary back-up device for and a secondary *400GB External Drive* from [Seagate](http://www.seagate.com/) for the overall back-up (this also serves as the back-up of the primary back-up too).

I somehow lost coupla new registration entries which I did during the weekend as the crashed happen between 2 days of back-up schedule (as the login credentials went away with the Keepass database). No e-mails, no project data were lost, nothing critical was lost. E-mails have a back-up on the hosting server for 7 days offset before it goes deleted, and for the project data, subversion from [cvsdude.org](http://www.cvsdude.org/) is the god-send service.

I have been thinking of investing in a *2GB USB 2.0 Mini USB Drive* from iOmega or the [Pocket Hard Drive](http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/pocket) from Seagate so that I can have the most critical daily operational datas on them. The iOmega mini drive would be better worn along with a Neck-Chain! Ben Forta blogged about [Backup for Workgroups](http://backup-for-workgroups.com/) software coupla weeks back.

### Lesson learnt

- Whatever, Thou Shall Backup everyday; and Back-up Whenever Your Computer is Free!
- Always have a minimum of 2 parallel Back-ups.
- If possible have multiple back-ups at multiple places, just in case natural disaster strikes.