The crappy stock market, my horrible sinus headache, the dust, none of it could out-do the sun this morning. It’s pretty darn cold outside, but the sun is shinning in (and showing the dust!)
The outside of the bathroom door is painted, first coat. The wash is started, the garbage and recycling at the curb, and the basement vacuumed. It was 8 a.m. when I looked at the clock, not bad for having that much done.
I’m getting ready to straighten out the gene data for tomorrow’s research trip, and finish backing up computers. They are actually backed up, but I’m getting a new “auto backup” system together. That should end the worry, I can just check everything once a week to be sure it is up to date, and all the drives work.
I actually have two 500 gb fixed drives for backup, one in my desktop, and one in Papa’s old desktop. Papa uses his laptop exclusively, but I keep the desktop on, and have it backup our data every day, It doesn’t slow me down, Papa isn’t here on weekdays so it doesn’t bother him. I don’t backup my laptop, since it is just a mirror of my desktop genealogy data, I re-write the gene data to my laptop before each library or research trip. To here is the backup scheme, in case you need advice.
Our data consists of:
- Papa’s personal files, e-mail files and recent photo files on his laptop
- A copy of the above on the main drive of his desktop
- A photo archive (before 2007) and a copy of (1) above on a backup drive on desktop (we never delete anything on this drive, just add new)
- Granny’s personal files, e-mail files, genealogy data and scanned family photos on my desktop
- A sometimes up-to date copy of a portion of the above on my laptop.
So, our backup data is pretty obvious, to a point:
- Papa’s personal, e-mail and recent photos exist on his laptop, the main drive of his desktop and on his backup drive. The backup plan for this is:
- Backup laptop data to desktop C:\ daily
- Backup desktop data to backup drive daily
- Backup the backup drive to the backup drive on my computer weekly
- My personal, e-mail, genealogy and family history exist on my desktop.
- Copy gene data to laptop before a research trip
- Backup Desktop to backup drive daily
- Backup the backup drive to the backup drive on Papa’s computer weekly.
I hope all this duplication will keep our data safe, but just in case, I we are going to purchase external backup drives to acrhive our times on monthly. There will be two, and one will be kept somewhere besides our home. When a months ends or begins, I will backup both archive files onto the other drive, and trade it out. So, we will always have a backup within a month of data offsite.
Overkill? Perhaps. But I never worry about our computer files.
Have a good day!
