Back That Ass(et) Up!

So I was working on tomorrow's post for POV Comic and I needed to pull some elements from a few of my past comics (to use in the background). When I tried to open one of my Adobe Illustrator files I got an error message. I hadn't opened this particular file in CS5.1, so I thought it might be a compatibility issue. I quickly fired up Illustrator CS3 and tried to open the file again - different error - same result.

It was at this moment that I almost got very sad. Note that I said ALMOST.

I keep 3 types of data backups. That's right... three.

1. I use a mirrored hard drive configuration to protect against hardware failure.
2. I use Windows 7 Ultimate and take advantage of the "System Protection" options which keeps "Previous Versions" of all my files.
3. I use Carbonite - Just in case of Fire/Flood/Theft etc.

I've never had to fall back on Carbonite, but it makes me feel a lot better knowing that it's there. I have done some test recoveries from Carbonite and they've all worked well.

Today, I was able to use the "Previous Versions" option in Windows 7 to recover a working copy of my Illustrator file and that made me quite happy.

If you're not using a data backup solution, I highly recommend that you start! There are plenty of easy ways to keep you files backed up... Don't wait until it's too late!

Carbonite

I feel like it's time that I give Carbonite online data backup a quick review.

A few months ago, I decided that I want to have a secondary data backup measure. Right now, I have my computer setup with a Mirror RAID. This allows me to keep my data on two drives simultaneously. This is great for if one of the drives fails, but does nothing to protect me against fire, flood, theft, etc..

I had heard about Carbonite and thought I would give them a shot. The price was right and the service boasted unlimited storage, so I figured, why not?

I feel like I made the right choice. So far, my favorite thing is that Carbonite remembers your files locations... and this is important for restoring lost data, but even more important for resuming partial backups...

Allow me to explain:

Because I frequently upgrade/reinstall my operating system, I keep all my user profile data on a secondary hard drive. This allows me to restore the main hard drive without disrupting my important data. I have hundreds of Gigabytes of data and I wanted to backup a good chunk of it. This backup is taking about 2 months to complete. About half way through the backup, I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 64bit, which required me to wipe out all the data on my main drive. I was worried that when I reinstalled Carbonite, it would lose its place on my secondary drive backup. It did not.

Carbonite integrates easily into your GUI and works along side windows in a seamless manor. The backup is slow at first, but once it's complete, it only updates changes, so it is rather quick depending on the size of your modified files.

The only complaint I have about Carbonite is that it does not backup all files types by default and for large files (over a few gigabytes) you have to select them manually. For a video editor like myself, this is a bit annoying, but I can see where for the average user, this would never be an issue.