Archive for January, 2006

Both twins have now learned how to take off their socks!

We usually put the socks back on to keep their little toes warm, but it’s fun to watch anyway.

OK, I’m going to hammer home a point that’s probably completely obvious to everyone, yet very few of us seem to do enough about it.

BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Buy an external hard drive (USB or FireWire), set up a weekly or monthly schedule, and back it up. Do this regularly. (Mac users like me can be smart about this and use Apple’s Backup application, which makes this easy and automatic.)

If you run a server, back up your data regularly. Whether you have a local tape drive, or an off-site storage vault accessible through FTP, back it up and be ready for the worst.

I’m harping on this because I just got a frantic e-mail from one of my former customers (back when I ran my own web hosting operation) who desperately needed to know if I had any copies of certain e-mails about a list of subjects or senders, because they had lost their copy and needed to refer to some vitally important document regarding their future ability to carry out their business.

I was able to restore the backups from tape, and I think I found what they wanted.

Save yourself the trouble - back it up, or at least keep an off-site copy.

E-mail administrators should seriously consider configuring their mail daemons to save a copy of EVERY message that comes in or out of their server, and saving that off-site. Google Mail accounts are free - set up a blind BCC for all messages to a GMail mailbox, and you’ve got a copy of everything. You’re pretty much assured that Google won’t lose your data, because it’s their responsibility to keep those hard drives safely spinning, and replace individual disks when they fail. If 2.5Gb (or more, as things grow) isn’t enough, get an account with 30gigs.com and do your best to fill that up.

Save it or lose it! Your business or your life may depend on it.