Backups, and Archiving

Simple: Backup, Backup, Backup...Archive ...

We have ALL been told. Backup, backup everything and backup often.

Most people hear and read this mantra but fail to do much about it until its too late. Remember, accidents and disasters don’t just happen... there are always warning signs.

So what are some simple steps that should be done regularly to avert a data loss disaster for a personal system. Network servers are a completely different story.

Use drive mirroring if you can afford it. Set it up with Apple’s Disk Utility that comes with OS X or Apple's Time machine. Don’t just back up whenever you think you should. Backup absolutely everything as an installable bootable image at the end of every month. Forget the differential, incremental, compression and fancy backup regimes. Get it all as is. Two good applications are Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner(CCC) currently at vers. 3.1.2 and Apple’s own Disk Utility. Of the two, I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backup purposes because it is easier to use. I have also used CCC for differentially copying system files from a known good copy of a system to bring a system “back to health”. 

Use Disk Utility when formatting and partitioning a new disk. It can be used to copy images. An interesting thing I have found is that (at least for Mac OS X 10.4) to create a bootable volume on a Firewire drive, you must enable owners for both the source volume and destination volumes. You then do the restore. This will ensure that if a viable OS image exists on the source drive, it will be bootable, at least as the start up drive, or an external firewire drive).


Using a slightly different approach (a system preferences plug-in that is easy to install) you could also use Jeff Holland's Deja Vu from propaganda productions. It works quite well and is very easy to use. It has the ability to do a full system disk backup either manually or automatically and locally or remotely to a server. It is easy to select critical folders for backup, and also easily schedule multiple periodic backups. However I reiterate: it is not a good idea to get to fancy with you backup regime. All of nothing once a month seems to be easy to remember, easy to monitor and easy to rebuild if required. The fastest way would to swap the backup disk into the start-up disk position and immediately do a new backup to a known good disk.

It is also worthwhile considering having a rotating backup set. That is two backup disks that are backed up alternately. One will be at most 1 month out of date, and the other at most 2 months out of date. However, this is now starting to look like standard backup procedures such as those offered by Apple's Time Machine on Mac OS X 10.5+ and other automated backup systems.

Naming files

For important and often modified files, append the ISO formatted date to the text part of the filename such as AssessTask-2008-10-06. This will have many benefits:

• Immediate identification of when it was saved- without a special view.
• Automatic sorting in directory listings where there are several versions.
• Ability to easily collect files using the file names.
• Ability to compare recency of files by means of the filename.


Use standard sub directory names - that is maintain consistent directory structures. Don’t just name folders any old thing that just happened to take your fancy at the time. For example: Unit_<name>: /Images, /Worksheets, /Presentations, /Assessment, /Management, /Resources, /01-<part_1>, /02<part_2>, ... etc. These last are sub-folders relating to say a week of work. Note they will automatically be sorted! This same structure can be used to construct a web site.


'Managing..., I mean managing ... downloads

Download ALL files to the desktop and manually distribute. This ensures you do not have hidden files all over the place and allows some manual control of download sessions, especially those that involve installation of software. At the end of a session, you should look at each download file at least once before committing it to the bin or saving it- where you want to put the file. This is a “Get Things Done” approach to management. Sort early and sort often.


Why do I still need that file?

Periodically collect files that you have accumulated in your file structure and review their worth. If you need to save them but you will not touch them for some time, save as much of the directory branch AS IS and will fit on a CD-ROM disc or DVD disc. Make sure you put the date in the name of the CD-ROM disc. It is surprising how much you can remove from a working disk. I estimate that about every 3 months you could remove at least 30%, and it will be automatically saved in an easily searchable directory structure, that could also be regenerated simply by copying to an appropriate sub-folder!