

Stolen Laptop Contains Man's Dreams - RBerenguel
http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100826/CGY_stolen_laptop_100826/20100826

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michael_dorfman
I remember writing my thesis, back in the days before the web. I left (5.25"
floppy disk, WordPerfect 4.2) copies with friends in as many diverse locations
as I could manage. I copied it onto any hard drive whose owner would let me,
and a few who wouldn't (like the college card catalog system--sorry!). I did
everything in my power to make sure that my work-in-progress could survive a
nuclear attack.

Why didn't this guy, exactly?

~~~
noonespecial
I learned this lesson with a lousy floppy on my C64 in 5th grade. I still
remember the awful sound of the 1541 struggling to read that lost file into
"Paperback Writer".

It haunts my dreams and reminds me to always back up, always.

~~~
lylejohnson
I always knew that I should keep backup(s), but I didn't get backup religion
either until the first time I had a hard disk crash on me and lose everything.
Unfortunately, that may be what it takes to get most folks into the habit.

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cperciva
Stories like this make me wonder if I should add a free "graduate student
writing a thesis" flag to Tarsnap accounts.

~~~
scrrr
And I wonder if I should write an ebook on "How to write your thesis with a
computer".

PM me if you want to collaborate. :)

~~~
cstuder
It might suffice to only have one page with the big word 'BACKUP!' on it.

Later editions might expand to 'BACKUPS!'.

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gaius
This can't even be true - surely the last version he sent to his supervisor to
review, so they'll have a copy.

~~~
jacquesm
The story says it contains his research and notes as well.

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holman
I'm continually amazed at the number of people who don't back up their most
important data. I'm not shaming this particular guy- the majority of my non-
techie friends make no real backups. Of those that do, very few of them make
regular, incremental backups (like Time Machine, for example).

With more and more data getting hosted on the cloud, maybe this concern
becomes (thankfully) less relevant.

~~~
aw3c2
Cloud storage is not a backup. "Oops, I deleted that file" deletes it in the
cloud too.

~~~
pohl
Being in the cloud is orthogonal to that issue, isn't it? After all, you could
use a DVCS in the cloud. Or a cloud service could offer this:

<https://www.dropbox.com/help/11>

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oyving
In my user support days at the university I studied at, I remember receiving
many students on the brink of crying and with a corrupt 3.5" disk in hand.
They had their only copy of their thesis on this floppy and were desperate for
help.

Most of the time the only thing we could do was to dd what was available and
pipe it through strings, and sometimes not even that. We tried telling them
they should store things on the university servers (which had backups), but it
took some time before students learned this.

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sachinag
Every personally important file I have lives in Dropbox (I'd be fucked if this
went bad; most recently, Missouri tried to get $30K in bogus taxes from me
that I was able to fend off with a copy of my 2004 tax return). My music is
synced with SugarSnyc (irritating but not critical to replace since I only buy
physical media).

I honestly don't get why everyone doesn't do something similar. And if you're
truly paranoid, there's Tarsnap.

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aufreak3
Backup, backup, backup. I keep critical stuff on 3 different physical media
and in different locations. Hard disk + DVDs + online. I feel so sorry for
this guy but would _never_ put myself in that position.

Now I need to plan for the foretold solar maximum disruption as well! ...
whether its true or not isn't the point.

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dannoffs
Mail the document your own email... Don't need a techie friend or some whacky
sync service.

~~~
dagw
Best low-tech solution I've found. No hand-holding and scary software needed.
Send an email once or twice a day and you have instant offsite versioned
backup. For added security CC it to a couple of different accounts (for
example both gmail and university account).

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Ben65
Run add for Carbonite, Time Machine, any backup service here. Something that's
that important, you don't take a backup of some kind every now and then?

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picouli
<http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm>

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cmars232
The sad thing is, it probably would have fit nicely in a free DropBox account,
or up on Google Docs.

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grigy
In my thesis writing days I used to copy each revised version on a CD.

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c4urself
this kind of story is always a wake up call to hurry up and save/backup your
data... the least you can do is send yourself a copy of the *.docx at for
example gmail.

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koevet
dropbox anyone?

~~~
arethuza
My wife just finished a thesis - that was in Carbonite, a hosted SVN repo
_and_ dropbox.

