5.25.2011

My BackUp Plan

It's surprising that I've waited this long to officially come up with a "Back Up Plan."  It's taken 10 years to have accumulated enough files that I feel like I need to "protect" my iStuff. 

Here is my plan (so far):
3TB G-Drive + DropBox + Mozy

First step?  I got a 3TB external hard drive (the G-Drive) and used this tutorial to partition it.  When you partition your device, it essentially breaks the one hard drive up into 3 separate devices so you can do different things with each chunk.  I decided on 3 parts: 500 gigs for Time Machine to use on my MacBook Pro, 500 gigs for TM on Chris's Macbook, and then 2TB to use as an external hard drive (Super-G). 


I've never used Time Machine before, but after partitioning my drive it was pretty self explanatory.  I chose the drive, clicked "use as backup disk" and Time Machine did the rest! 

Using the Cloud is important to me too.  What happens if there is a fire or a flood and I lose my Macbook and Super-G external?  There are several cheap options to store your entire hard drive, but I'm sticking with free for now.
Step 2: DropBox
DropBox offers 2 Gigs of free space, which I fully take advantage of.  I think my use of DropBox will change after I get an iPad2, but for now, I use DropBox as a backup of all my schoolwork.  I have set it up so that my "EdTech" folder gets automatically backed up with DropBox, so I never lose my current schoolwork. 

Step 3: MozyHome
Mozy offers 5 gigs of free space, and this is where I keep most of my documents.  5 gigs hold pretty much all of my text documents, but doesn't even start on my photos, design work, music, movies, etc.

So, worse case scenario, what happens to my photos and other large files if I lose my external and MacBook since they aren't backed up on Mozy or DropBox?  Well, I'm working on that slowly.  Flickr gives each user space to store 200 free photos a month, so I'm sure to backup my photos each month by publishing them privately to Flickr every time I make an iPhoto album.  But what happens to my old ones?  I'm not sure yet. 

I'm not ready to pay more, so we will just have to see.  I'll let you know when I figure it out.

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