The Importance of Double-Checking Your Computer Backup Procedure

Looking West, Promontory Point, Utah; Site of the driving of the golden
spike(s) to complete the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S.

www.dennismook.com

I run an automated computer file backup procedure each night starting at 2330 hours, which is usually the time I am off the computer and getting in bed for the night.  I use the Microsoft Windows system and the nightly backup copies the My Documents folder's contents, the My Pictures folder's contents, the My Music folder's contents, the My Video's folder's contents, my Lightroom 4 catalog and backup files, my email (Outlook) main file, etc.  I keep all my image files on a separate internal 2TB drive and that is also synchronized nightly.  The backup covers pretty much everything that I would want to recover if my hard drive(s) crashed, were destroyed or stolen.  I also have an off-site backup that I run once per month so if any disaster were to befall me and I lost my entire computer system, I would have everything but the last month's worth of files.  I made the decision to live with losing as much as a month's worth of files.  But, that may change and I may start to run the off-site backup every two weeks or so.  I know, I know--I should run it more frequently, even more than every two weeks. 

Additionally, I availed myself to take advantage of a free year of unlimited backup to CrashPlan (www.crashplan.com).  I am in the process of backing up to their cloud service now, but it takes many days.  I am backing up over 4TB to their service. 

With what I do, so far, so good.  Or so I thought!

This morning, I was routinely checking my backup to see if it ran properly, as I do on occasion.  I try to remember to check it every few days.  I found that my backup was not running properly and many of my files, that I assumed had been backed up, were not copied.  I don't know why.  For example, some of my image files were not copied, but the accompanying XMP sidecar files were there?  For the life of me, I cannot understand why XMP files got backed up and not the raw image files, which sit next to each in sequence.

In any case, the point is that I checked my backup for the updated files, identified the problem very quickly and remedied the situation by re-creating the backup plan.  No files were lost.  But they could have been if I had made the assumption that the automated backup procedure worked perfectly.

One day, I'll have to break down and spend the money for a DROBO or Synology backup system which consists of multiple redundant drives to really protect my work.  But, the cost is high and other things take precedence.  For now, what I do is a bit labor intensive, but it works--most of the time!

Tip:  Check your backups to make sure they are really there.  Get a bit paranoid about it if you have to just to protect your work.

Thanks for looking.

Enjoy!
Dennis Mook