BACKUPS !!!

[Ben Rubinstein]

Thanks for the reminder, Ralph, and glad you indeed had backups.

On which subject... my top tip to friends, family, and even casual 
acquaintances is *Backblaze* network backup.

It's not a substitute for local and off-site direct backups. I'm sure that as 
professionals in an IT-related field we all have all those in hand. And for 
those with just a laptop rather than a big raid array etc all the operating 
systems now make it trivially easy (and cheap) to plug in a little USB drive 
and be backed up. But our less technical friends and family may just not have 
got round to it yet; and if they have - especially with a laptop - they may 
not remember to plug the backup drive in very often.

There are lots of network backup options of course - I could never get round 
to setting it up for my family's machines because there were too many options 
to choose between, and surely I should go one of the free setups between 
computers... etc. Too many options, result inertia.

What makes Backblaze fantastic, in my opinion, is that they've cut through all 
of that, reducing to the absolute minimum the effort and choices required. Go 
to https://backblaze.com, click "try it for free", enter your email address 
and make up a password. It downloads a little installer - you run that and 
you're essentially done.

They bake your email/password into the installer so you don't have to do 
anything else. After a while they'll email you to tell you how it's going; 
eventually they'll email to invite you to give them your credit card if you 
want to keep going. There is a control panel, there are options, there are 
other groovy features - but if you never know about or touch them you'll still 
be getting backed up.

There are also no plans to choose between: it's $60/computer/year, regardless 
of how big (or how many) the drive(s) attached to that computer.

Backblaze are very clear that this shouldn't be your first- or second-line 
backup. They're right. But if I ask my spouse or child when they last plugged 
the backup drive into their laptop, I know the answer will make me cry. The 
fact that Backblaze will have kept running to the last minute they closed the 
lid is my sanity clause. When bad things inevitably happen - and of course it 
will fall to me to deal with it - I will be able to rescue their undeserving 
asses!

I don't want to give you an affiliate link because I'd rather you got backed 
up than doubted the purity of my evangelism! If you're all covered, good for 
you. But if you're not, or if your cousin, colleague, or chiropractor look 
like they need a clue - I think this is a very small amount of money to 
increase peace of mind.

Ben


On 19/03/2019 16:59, Ralph DiMola via use-livecode wrote:
> Just a reminder... On Win 10 my 2 TB Raid 1 array using 1.3 TBs containing
> all my data, 3 dev VMs and all my source code was corrupted. It took a very
> annoying day to replace HW(controller) and recover data/VMs from my backups.
> All is back with NO data loss.
> 
> As it has been said here before "Raid is not a substitute for backups". I
> have multiple copies with at least 1 off-line(crypto locker/power surge) and
> 1 off-site(fire/theft). I don't use any cloud backups. Why? MySpace lost 12
> years of user data last year. Although cloud backup reliability is high it's
> not high enough for me to bet my business on not to mention how long it
> would take to download 1.3 TBs. Although all my Mac data is an SMB to the
> Win Raid I still use Time Machine on the Mac so I don't need to re-install
> components needed development.
> 
> Stay vigilant my friends.
> 
> Ralph DiMola
> IT Director
> Evergreen Information Services
> rdimola at evergreeninfo.net
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>