= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
CAE_Jones comments on Group Rationality Diary, July 16-31 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (34)
I did a backup of my computer data to external hard disk.
I knew that computer disks can crash, and once I lost some data after a disk crash, and yet I never before did the full backup. Because... well, it was a trivial inconvenience, something easy to leave to some unspecified day in the future. Also, thinking about a possible crash meant thinking about having to install things again on a new computer, so it was more pleasant to not think about such things. During the last five years I even had an external disk at home with plenty of free space, and yet I never did the backup.
A few days ago my computer had problem starting (then the problem magically disappeared again) and I realized that if I'd lose the data now, I would be really angry that I did not use the opportunity while I had it. Even so, it took me almost a week to really do the backup. Well, today it's finally done.
When was the last time you made a safe copy of your data? If at this moment your disk would stop working , how much would you be willing to pay someone to restore the data? Which of those data would you miss most?
I have the same problem. Worse is that I kinda need to leave my computer to do the backup for upwards of a few hours, making it slightly more inconvenient. I know I haven't done a backup since my last major update to my commercial game, so if I lost my data right now, the source code would be gone (the compiled program itself is backed up in a secure location).
Somewhat related is that I have several gigabytes of uncompressed recordings in .wav format, which I have backed up, but still don't feel good about deleting, even though I could use the disk space. I have a serious dislike of destroying data, even though in this case it is far from actually destroyed in any sense other than its section on one of two disks is marked as available.
I seem to recall hearing about some service that can automate backups. I would have to investigate the security/costs/CPU usage/etc, but it sounds like it could help some people get around the trivial inconvenience of actively backing up data.
Convert to FLAC? Then at least your problem will look more like 'I have a gigabyte of FLACs'.
Suggestion: if you haven't by the time you read this, do a backup of that source code right now. Leave backing up the rest of your computer for another day if necessary.