[OT] Saved by Dropbox Packrat

[Peter M. Brigham, MD]

On May 23, 2012, at 8:11 PM, Andre Garzia wrote:

> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Tim Jones <tolistim at me.com> wrote:
> 
>> On May 23, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Andre Garzia wrote:
>> 
>>> If you're not a Packrat user, your history is retained only for 30 days
>> if I remember correctly. This is enough to save your life but I am really
>> paranoid and the illusion of it being there forever appeals to me.
>> 
>> Ooh, and I'm paranoid of any online provider that claims "forever" in
>> their marketing.  LTO tape in 2 locations is my only safety blanket.  But,
>> that's what I do for a living...
>> 
> 
> Dropbox is not my only backup. It is my most convenient one...
> 
> I also backup to an external harddrive using superduper once a month and I
> have a time capsule but that device is not as good as it could be (very bad
> router).
> 
> My server side stuff is backed up to Amazon S3 daily at midnight, all files
> (not incremental) plus MySQL dumps.

I run everything on a MacBook and use Dropbox for a backup of my crucial files, and the Mac Time Machine runs hourly backups while I'm on my home wireless network, plus every time I leave work I back up my work files to a flash drive. I got burned once too many times, and each one of my backups has come in handy from time to time. ("Has come in handy..." = "saved my ass.") I suspect that almost everyone who backs up obsessively does so out of bitter experience.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig