I’ve had a couple of backup reminders recently. John suffered a hard drive failure. Then his backup failed. It reminded me that I need to sort out a backup for my server. This server! Then I accidentally deleted my whole address book. Thankfully I was able to restore from backup quite painlessly. Thank you dear, sweet rsync.net.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the message with YOU. When did you last backup? Do you have an automated backup plan? Have you tested it? Do you know you can actually recover your data, or do you just hope? Do you keep your backup drive next to your computer? How would you be affected by fire or theft?

Backup is a little bit like insurance. It’s tempting to drive without insurance, until you have a crash that is. Then, of course, the insurance seems like a bargain. Why not decide today is a good day to check over your backup procedure? Maybe even run a little test restore just to be sure.

Here’s a picture from amanky completely unrelated to backup which appeared in a flickr search for backup all the same.