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On keeping backups
Jan. 4th, 2026 02:16 pmHey, 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?"
( Read more... )
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?"
( Read more... )
