Ever since the Fusion Drive Crash of 2019, I've been eternally paranoid about losing stuff. It sticks in my head at all times. I refuse to ever lose data ever again. I've been making random copies of stuff I feel like I'm gonna lose on random drives for years now, on top of the DVD-R site backups I already do and my two externals filled with random garbage I've been using since late 2019.
Of course, a backup solution is only as good as your ability to find anything in it, and I've just had shit everywhere for years now. I think the last time I really thought out the way I save files was when I was a teenager. Back then, I was able to fit everything I did onto a single Dropbox account, but that was a long time ago. I must've had three different writing folders across multiple machines and cloud storage accounts—it was a nightmare. I stopped saving things to my hoards because I didn't know where I'd put it, and I didn't want to lose it when I inevitably forgot I had it.
So, I've solved both problems. I've reorganized and consolidated all my files, and I've got a multi-tier backup solution that I can use a diffs program like WinMerge to compare copies of between, so I always know my stuff is up-to-date and identical between computers. Here's the plan:
- Tier zero is live storage, internal hard drives that are convenient and provide the working copy of whatever I'm doing at that moment, but can die at any moment, so are untrusted.
- Tier one is a set of twelve shards. Shards are sorted mini-drives and store anything I have in my possession on a specific topic. Writing and scanned books are a shard. My music library is a shard. Somnol's site backups are their own shard, as are my copies of all my site stuff. Shards are stored on the hard drives in folders, and they're copied onto one flash drive apiece. This limits what data can get lost if a flash drive eats shit, reduces the amount of work needed to bring a lost shard back up (buy an equivalently-sized drive and copy the shard over), and I can back up to it pretty conveniently since the flash drives are all stored in a case on my desk.
- Tier two are artifacts. These are extra copies of specific files, stuff at-risk of being lost for being so rare (say, Windows cracks or unreleased music I got specifically from an artist) or completed projects of mine with stuff to go with them (like albums and their project files, or my Quake maps and their screenshots). Artifacts are any other backup media, DVD-Rs, cloud, SD cards, and meant for more targeted preservation.
- Tier three are vaults, my external hard drives. The scheme for sorting these is the same as the internal drives, containing a full set of shards in folders, but because they're not on all the time, they should last longer than the internal ones. If they die, no big deal, vaults are redundant to each other; I can just buy another external and copy a full set of shards to it. I don't back up to the vaults constantly, more like a couple times a month when the mood strikes.
This approach is already paying dividends. I only have one sitemaking folder, and if I'm working on sites over on the eMachines Box, I just copy to the matching flash drive when I'm done and update the other machines/vaults with it. I've already found files I forgot I even had, and now I have multiple copies of each one. WinMerge helps a ton with keeping stuff straight; I check by size and modified date, with some custom filters for ignoring the thumbnail databases and System Volume Information folders on Windows and the resource forks and .DS_Store files on Mac.
It might sound like overkill, but I'm much happier and more comfortable with this setup than I was with my previous. Seriously, it's hard to back things up when you don't even know you have them, or have no good way of finding out which copy is newer and has the right files in it. I'm actually not done yet; for one thing, I'm not particularly protected in the case of a disaster at Somnolescent HQ (at the moment, I don't have a good place offsite to store extra drives, but I'll be fine once I have a car), and I'm still waiting for one more flash drive to arrive, a 256GB SanDisk, for the final shard.
I've also learned through doing this that I just like collecting flash drives. I didn't have the ability to just buy new flash drives as a kid, but I always had one in my pocket at school, and when I'd invariably lose it, that was it until I got another at some point, really. They're cheap and they're all so differently shaped and colored, so I'm happy to indulge now. Some of the other flash drives I've picked up at my store on sale have either gone on to be used as live USBs for Linux, both nostalgic and new, and other alternative OSes (still haven't gotten the chance to play with Ventoy) or become technician's toolboxes for driver installs and other things work should be providing me but don't. Sometimes, I don't have a use for them, but I just find them neat. Flash drives are neat! They make me happy.
