Backup your backup

My last post was on a fateful day. About two hours after I posted, my hard drive on my laptop failed. Ugh.

But not as bad as it could be, since I had backed up the previous Monday. I had to leave town for Seattle and Idaho almost immediately, but had a hard drive on order. I thought through which (few) files I had worked on between the backup and the crash, and figured it would be no big deal. I knew that reformatting the hard drive and installing all the software would be a pain, but that's tech.

Being on the road for 6 days with no laptop felt like walking through the airport in only my boxers, but I was grateful for friend's laptops, and my thumb drive (which had all my training presentations on it.

Got home on the 12th, worked on the reinstall for a bit and then dropped it again to go to Boston
. Got home monday and spent some time before heading to Kellogg for a great class. Tuesday I really hit it, and then the realization smacked me in the face:

I had only backed up SOME things, not EVERYTHING. My email was gone, my newsletter mailing list (some 1400 people) was two months out of date, my podcast recordings had vanished, etc.

My fault. I was in a hurry, and didn't double check what I had backed up.

Double ugh.

So, now, two weeks later, I'm back up with some digital wounds to heal. Regular readers know I rant about backing up and disaster plans.

From now on, I'll rant about having a backup (person) check your backup.