A Word of Caution

[kaasirpent]

Sometimes it's a good idea to point out that even statistically unlikely events can occur. If they're extraordinarily good in their outcome, we often describe it as "miraculous." If they're deleterious in effect, we say things like, "Someone up there hates me." In reality, it's just coincidence.

I have a USB drive that I carry with me at all times on a lanyard around my neck. On it is everything I have ever written, in some form or another. Also, some twelve to thirteen years of my personal journal, the entirety of my old web site, and things like that. Much of it irreplaceable.

Because it's irreplaceable, I make periodic backups, both to another USB drive I keep on my keychain, a third USB drive, and to my work and home PCs. And my old laptop.

So, what are the odds that the following would all occur?

• I'd accidentally remove the USB drive from my work machine while it was saving backups from my journal application, thereby corrupting every file in the directory where some of the irreplaceable data is kept. Namely, journal years 1997 - 2008 + story notes for my novel.


• I'd accidentally remove the USB drive while it was saving a document from the app I use to write stories on The Shiny, thereby corrupting every single file in the directory with all my "submissions" for critique.


• I'd erase all the backups of said data from my backup USB drive in order to carry some video files to a friend's laptop and then forget to clear off the videos and take another backup of my irreplaceable data.


• I'd erase all the backups from my work computer in the interest of saving disk space. Because, after all, I have other backups.


• I'd accidentally erase the backups from my home computer because I didn't recognize what they were, but reason that after all, I have other backups.


• I'd erase the backups from my laptop because it's no longer the one I use most often, but then forget to do backups on The Shiny.


• I'd lose the second backup USB drive.

Keep in mind that all of this occurred over a period of about three months, so none of it yelled "problem!" at me until the moment I corrupted my journal files and went looking for my backups.

And found that there were none. Anywhere.

Luckily—and this is just pure, dumb luck—I managed to locate an ancient copy of the irreplaceable journal files tucked away in the wrong directory on my work hard drive. Because I was attempting to drag and drop the .zip file and it went into the wrong directory. It's quite old, but at least it has copies of my lost, irreplaceable journal files that don't ever change after the year I save them. So I have my journal from 1997 to 2008 back, as well as copious notes I've compiled over the course of a decade for my novel. The current journal file wasn't corrupted, luckily. Gone forever are some of my writing that I had not thought to copy into my journal or put into Scrivener on The Shiny. Luckily, most of it was crap, so I'm not too broken up about it.

What you can learn from this:

1. Never, ever remove a USB drive until it has been properly dismounted from the host computer. Even though you've done it 100 times and it never corrupted your data, all it takes is the one time it does corrupt your data to make a believer out of you.


2. Do backups on a schedule, and never deviate from that schedule.


3. Do backups. :)


4. Never delete allcopies of your old backups, no matter how tempting it is. Keep at least the most recent one, even if you think you have more recent ones on another medium.

Keep in mind that I'm an experienced computer professional who knows better, but because it didn't all happen at once, no single incident screamed "fix it now!" to me.

So...when was your most recent backup? Are you sure? Wanna go check? :)

Comments

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Yep. Especially the " Never, ever remove a USB drive until it has been properly dismounted from the host computer.", I've had arguments with people about that one.

http://www.ironmountain.com/services/tours/Backuptrama.asp

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Also -- now and then back everything up on a non-volatile medium, such as a CD. Archive this.

Oh, and label it, so that when you need it, you don't have to chase down every *&(^^%$%^$& CD in your house and put it in the drive to see what's on it...