About a month and a half ago, I lost my new camera somewhere in New York. I spent a day and a half looking for it, but I pretty quickly accepted that it was gone. I’d only bought it at Christmas, so there was no homework to do—I was getting the exact same model again, the excellent [Canon SD600](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EMWBT2/).

Having to replace a lost or stolen item is a frustrating process. But as I dropped $200 on another camera, I stopped for a moment to be thankful for what I *didn’t* lose: In just a month and a half of service, that first camera covered Christmas with the family, as well as my first few weeks in New York, a total of 681 pictures. In the weeks since I bought its replacement, I’ve been to Vermont, Boston, Philadelphia, and D.C., where I’ve racked up over a thousand *more* snaps.

That camera’s memory card was empty. I didn’t lose a single picture. And yet, for the vast majority of those pictures, the only copy was on my laptop. A small minority were posted to Facebook albums… but Facebook is a display mechanism, not a backup. I was long overdue for a proper backup solution.

### Backup

I’ve [written previously](http://uwmike.com/articles/2005/12/06/quick-server-backup/) about using rsync and cron to back stuff up remotely. But when I wrote that, I was talking about 50 MB of assorted PHP scripts and SQL dumps from a forum and a blog. I wasn’t talking about 10 GB of photos and 12 GB of MP3 files. Even with incremental backup, that’s a *tremendously* large initial bandwidth commitment.

I wanted something quicker and easier, which meant going local. There were two options: writable DVDs, or an external hard drive.

As I stood in the [Fifth Avenue Apple Store](http://www.apple.com/retail/fifthavenue/) clutching a meagre package of DVD-Rs, I knew already it was a band-aid, not a cure. I’d burn the discs once, I’d never verify them ever, and I’d only occasionally update an incremental disc. I put them down and wandered over to look at external drives.

I ended up buying a bad-ass [LaCie 320 GB](http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10058), for—with the tax—almost exactly $200. Is there not some poetic about that? It came formatted for Mac, it came with the cables I needed to hook it up, and it came with software for a one-touch dump of my whole home directory. Not just the photos and music, but *all* of it. Whoosh.

### Peace of Mind

Backup and peace of mind is kind of a cliche. In reality, anything important I do on my computer is on other computers that I’m shelled into. If I lost my computer, there would be a period of mourning, and then I would simply buy another and move on.

But at least now if I lose it, it’s *only* a matter of a financial setback, and not also an emotional one.

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 2:23 am to Culture, Soapbox.