Please, backup your computers!
Posted by Doug Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:06:14 GMT
I’m amazed when I hear things like this: spill a drink, loose your computer, code not checked into a repository, no backup. I don’t mean to pick on this one guy. It feels like I hear of this about once a month. How long have we known about hard disk failures? How many times have you heard you should back up your data? How many of you do?
For more than 90% of us (Mac users—there must be a good solution for others as well) the solution is simple: buy an external disk and SuperDuper!. The first backup is somewhat painful, but after that it only takes about 10 – 15 minutes. You can even schedule it to happen while you’re not using your computer.
The combined price of the drive and software is less than $125. That’s a pretty cheap insurance policy for when disaster strikes. Nightly backups are great for peace of mind.
Oh, another piece of advice: don’t leave code on your computer not committed to your source control. If you think it’s going to take a while to get done, branch your code but still check it in often.
