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A lifetime of backups

A recap of the strategies I've used for personal backups based on the time and machine I used.

 80s 

At the time, the only machine I have access to is the great Apple ][e. I don't have a backup strategy, because I use it as a gaming machine and the little development I make sits on a floppy. I can't even remember a floppy dying - so no fear of loosing data. It's been a while, so if I had a backup strategy, it was to copy the floppies to newer ones.

Dataloss: Bard Tale's III original floppies, one of the few games we had purchased, when I tried to crack it.

90s

During the 90s I used a bunch of machines from the Macintosh LC, Atari Falcon 030, BeBox, Pentium with Adaptec SCSI card.

Strategy: No backups, because I'm dumb. In the end, we had a Zip drive, so I did save stuff on these. I also burned CDrom with data that I actually backed up. I never did try restoring, I'm not even sure where this Zip disk and CDs ended up (probably in a trash at some point). I'm not even sure they would be readable if I had them handy. My current computers do not have CD/DVD/bays nor SCSI ports. 

Dataloss: Not much that really counts and that I can remember. But yes if you asked me anything digital from that period I would just be unable to give you anything.

2000s

ADSL/Internet kicks in, because I now mostly have full-time connectivity from home. I still have a poor strategy. I will burn a CD once in a while, will carry a slip case with these, but that's more for work than personal stuff. 

I do burn DVD, I do test that I can read them - but again, I have not clues where these DVDs are. I still have a stash of DVDs I could use for backups, but no DVD burner nor reader.

Dataloss: My first GPG key when I reinstalled my system, because I had forgotten about the key. The Hobbit BeBox I got after beeurope closed, I had no backup, and on the first attempt to boot it failed. I did find boot floppies for that one and made archives, but I've also lost these to later lack of backups. I didn't even test If the image I produced for these floppies were usable. Lost my blog, because the machine died at reboot after an system update.

 

NOW

I now have a dedicated server at home, running TrueNas Core, but could be running FreeBSD, that hosts some ZFS pools, and I use rsync to save my laptops to it. My servers are also using rsync.

Once a year or so, I do copy some of my important files to an HD and USB key, in case things die. It's better than before, but If the house goes on fire, I'll lose everything. 

 

 Conclusion:

Backups are :

  • Hard, you need to set things up properly
  • expensive, you need dedicated HW
  • complex you need to externalize to make sure your backups are safe

For enterprises, it's quite easy, as it's easier to absorb the costs associates with backups, but for individuals, it's a nightmare.

 

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