The Importance of Backups

A few years ago I received a frantic email from a friend. At the time, he was a doctoral student finishing his dissertation (an original contribution to human knowledge–in most programs this is the final paper required for a doctorate). Unfortunately the hard drive in his computer crashed. He had no backup copies, and was desperate for help. Eventually, he had to send the hard drive to a recovery company. The company did recover the lost files–but the bill was easily over a thousand dollars!

All devices fail. MAKE BACKUPS! No one wants to redo their work. My friend could have spared himself a lot of grief had he simply maintained reasonable backup copies of his work. However, just having copies does not guarantee safety.