On keeping backups
Jan. 4th, 2026 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enchantedsleeperHey, everyone; happy new year! This wasn't originally intended as a new year's post; I started jotting it down a few days after Christmas, thinking that it would just be a quick reflection (ha, it's like I don't know myself at all) but worth posting anyway, and then it wound up becoming longer and taking a while to finish writing. But it feels like a decent sentiment to start off the year: namely, holding onto what matters.
I've had plenty of occasion to think about backups recently.
In November, my laptop hard drive abruptly yeeted itself from this mortal plane - the second such meltdown within 9 months (in hindsight we should have replaced it after the first one, but we weren't 100% sure it was a hard drive problem. After the second time, we were xD)
Luckily, thanks to the software that my partner and I splurged on after the first meltdown, we were able to reconstruct the partition and recover my files, but that took a while and I'd been working on a job application when everything went kaboom. Also luckily, I had been paranoid enough to save copies of my application responses to Dropbox with the thought process, "Would I be more annoyed if I somehow lost these than if I took a few extra moments to back them up?"
Which turned out to be extremely sound logic.
My tech misadventures weren't over, because midway through December I then lost my phone to an unfortunate dip in the toilet. (Sadly, this was not my first rodeo with a toilet-related phone demise, nor was it even my second). I had thought that my largely waterproof case would be enough to save it, but it wasn't to be.
Anyway, this has given me plenty of opportunity to not just consider but experience the answer to, "What if you abruptly lost access to the things you assumed would always be accessible to you - what would you wish you'd done differently?"
It's wild how easy it is to take continued access to things like accounts, photos, files, and other important information for granted. Or to know that you should make that backup but put it off because well, it's not THAT urgent. (Until it is). After my second hard drive meltdown, I set up a weekly reminder in Finch (a self-care/habit tracking app) to back up the files on my laptop, determined that this would now become a thing that I Do Regularly. And yet I still find myself putting it off because ugh, seems like a hassle, I'll do it later.
(I don't want to rely on cloud backups to OneDrive like Microsoft keeps insisting I should, but it does mean that I have to put in a little more work to keep things backed up manually).
Anyway, the reason for this musing is that I realised I should apply the same mentality to my fanworks-and-assorted-other-creations archiving. I'm enthusiastically archiving every fanwork I've created since I started publishing fanworks (plus one or two that never quite saw the light of day) and I'm not discriminating as to the age of the work - the oldest, cringiest stuff from the depths of my FF.net is proudly hosted; in fact, that went up first. I've also been inclusive as to the types of meta I archive, putting up short snippets of meta-ish observations that were posted to Tumblr alongside fully-fledged essays.
But then I start to think about other things I really wouldn't want to lose even if they aren't top of the list when I think about what should be archived. I've been toying with the idea of creating a 'blog' section that mirrors my Dreamwidth posts generally (I could also do this with Pillowfort), but it didn't feel like a priority when I already had those posts somewhere I felt confident wouldn't go offline. Was there utility in making another copy? I'm pretty sure I even had an item on my enchantedsleeper.space to-do list for this and then took it off.
But flipping the thought process around to "how would I feel if all of these posts vanished overnight?" makes me consider things differently. Given the choice, I'd still like to hang onto my old Snowflake Challenge posts and the fandom friending meme I did and my emotions about the Marianas Trench 'A Normal Life' lyric video. I don't think that Dreamwidth is going anywhere any time soon, but why wait until it does? Likewise, I've been meaning to dig out some threads on Mastodon that I remember fondly (like my reaction to the comments on my first ever Starship Iris fic) and cross-post them somewhere accessible, but it hasn't been a priority because I take my continued access to those 6+-year-old posts for granted. Yes, I can see you all shaking your heads at me for that assumption. Well, consider this to be me course-correcting.
At the same time, I don't necessarily think everything needs to be hung onto. I've separately been going through my Google Photos and pulling old snaps onto an external hard drive so that I can delete them from the cloud and then Google will stop threatening to cut off my email. And my god, I took so many photos of food. I'm sure these were extremely significant at the time, but looking back, I have no idea what the meal was, even when I obviously took it at a restaurant. I'm okay with losing access to those pictures - they served their purpose. (They're getting backed up for the time being anyway, but only because it would be much more work to archive things selectively).
Likewise, going back through my old Mastodon posts from the early years while looking for a specific thread is nostalgic, but most of them are context-dependent and have also served their purpose. I know that many people even go so far as to set up a bot or script that will auto-delete posts of a certain age because not everything needs to be kept - and not everything ages well. I'm too much of a keeper of things to put that in place (especially when, as I just established, I don't often save things as promptly as I should) but I understand the rationale.
Curation is the way to go, but as long as I prioritise backing up the things I care most about, I know that those will be safe even if everything does suddenly disappear.
How is everyone's new year going so far? I hope you had a pleasant end to 2025 and enjoyed some year-end celebrations if that's something that you like to celebrate!
I've had plenty of occasion to think about backups recently.
In November, my laptop hard drive abruptly yeeted itself from this mortal plane - the second such meltdown within 9 months (in hindsight we should have replaced it after the first one, but we weren't 100% sure it was a hard drive problem. After the second time, we were xD)
Luckily, thanks to the software that my partner and I splurged on after the first meltdown, we were able to reconstruct the partition and recover my files, but that took a while and I'd been working on a job application when everything went kaboom. Also luckily, I had been paranoid enough to save copies of my application responses to Dropbox with the thought process, "Would I be more annoyed if I somehow lost these than if I took a few extra moments to back them up?"
Which turned out to be extremely sound logic.
My tech misadventures weren't over, because midway through December I then lost my phone to an unfortunate dip in the toilet. (Sadly, this was not my first rodeo with a toilet-related phone demise, nor was it even my second). I had thought that my largely waterproof case would be enough to save it, but it wasn't to be.
Anyway, this has given me plenty of opportunity to not just consider but experience the answer to, "What if you abruptly lost access to the things you assumed would always be accessible to you - what would you wish you'd done differently?"
It's wild how easy it is to take continued access to things like accounts, photos, files, and other important information for granted. Or to know that you should make that backup but put it off because well, it's not THAT urgent. (Until it is). After my second hard drive meltdown, I set up a weekly reminder in Finch (a self-care/habit tracking app) to back up the files on my laptop, determined that this would now become a thing that I Do Regularly. And yet I still find myself putting it off because ugh, seems like a hassle, I'll do it later.
(I don't want to rely on cloud backups to OneDrive like Microsoft keeps insisting I should, but it does mean that I have to put in a little more work to keep things backed up manually).
Anyway, the reason for this musing is that I realised I should apply the same mentality to my fanworks-and-assorted-other-creations archiving. I'm enthusiastically archiving every fanwork I've created since I started publishing fanworks (plus one or two that never quite saw the light of day) and I'm not discriminating as to the age of the work - the oldest, cringiest stuff from the depths of my FF.net is proudly hosted; in fact, that went up first. I've also been inclusive as to the types of meta I archive, putting up short snippets of meta-ish observations that were posted to Tumblr alongside fully-fledged essays.
But then I start to think about other things I really wouldn't want to lose even if they aren't top of the list when I think about what should be archived. I've been toying with the idea of creating a 'blog' section that mirrors my Dreamwidth posts generally (I could also do this with Pillowfort), but it didn't feel like a priority when I already had those posts somewhere I felt confident wouldn't go offline. Was there utility in making another copy? I'm pretty sure I even had an item on my enchantedsleeper.space to-do list for this and then took it off.
But flipping the thought process around to "how would I feel if all of these posts vanished overnight?" makes me consider things differently. Given the choice, I'd still like to hang onto my old Snowflake Challenge posts and the fandom friending meme I did and my emotions about the Marianas Trench 'A Normal Life' lyric video. I don't think that Dreamwidth is going anywhere any time soon, but why wait until it does? Likewise, I've been meaning to dig out some threads on Mastodon that I remember fondly (like my reaction to the comments on my first ever Starship Iris fic) and cross-post them somewhere accessible, but it hasn't been a priority because I take my continued access to those 6+-year-old posts for granted. Yes, I can see you all shaking your heads at me for that assumption. Well, consider this to be me course-correcting.
At the same time, I don't necessarily think everything needs to be hung onto. I've separately been going through my Google Photos and pulling old snaps onto an external hard drive so that I can delete them from the cloud and then Google will stop threatening to cut off my email. And my god, I took so many photos of food. I'm sure these were extremely significant at the time, but looking back, I have no idea what the meal was, even when I obviously took it at a restaurant. I'm okay with losing access to those pictures - they served their purpose. (They're getting backed up for the time being anyway, but only because it would be much more work to archive things selectively).
Likewise, going back through my old Mastodon posts from the early years while looking for a specific thread is nostalgic, but most of them are context-dependent and have also served their purpose. I know that many people even go so far as to set up a bot or script that will auto-delete posts of a certain age because not everything needs to be kept - and not everything ages well. I'm too much of a keeper of things to put that in place (especially when, as I just established, I don't often save things as promptly as I should) but I understand the rationale.
Curation is the way to go, but as long as I prioritise backing up the things I care most about, I know that those will be safe even if everything does suddenly disappear.
How is everyone's new year going so far? I hope you had a pleasant end to 2025 and enjoyed some year-end celebrations if that's something that you like to celebrate!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-04 06:27 pm (UTC)I'm amazed to say I had a lovely Christmas holiday after some very difficult years. Usually I'm collapsed in tears over Christmas after desperately holding my family together all year, but 2025 was a nice break from endless struggles.
How was your Christmas/New Year, apart from technology hiccups?
no subject
Date: 2026-01-04 08:27 pm (UTC)I'm so glad that you had a relaxing Christmas this time! 💕 It's safe to say mine was varied - we had some lovely celebrations with friends but there's also been a lot of stress since my mother-in-law was admitted to hospital on Christmas Eve. So we mostly spent the time in between Christmas and the new year (and after the new year) travelling to the hospital for visits. We're really hoping that 2026 brings some positive developments in that regard 🤞🫤