File this one in the What Were They Thinking? file. Charles Memminger reports on Roslyn Catracchia’s big mistake.
Thieves broke into her Aina Haina home the other day and stole, among other things, two computers and a backup drive containing her life’s work of of musical scores and musicals.
Catracchia’s files were backed up on two computers and a backup disk drive. That’s better than no backup at all, but still leaves files vulnerable to a real catastrophic event—flood, fire, earthquake, and theft.
The incident is an important warning to every computer user to not only back up their computers on an external hard drive, but to make sure that hard drive is kept “off the property” (like in a safe deposit box) so that in the event of theft, fire or something like that, the files aren’t lost.
Off premise backups will become a big deal this year. It’s one thing to have files saved on multiple computers, something else again to have more important files on backup disk drives, but even better to have the non-replaceable files backed up off premise. That means CD, DVD, small disk drive, or online service—somewhere else other than near the computer.
It’s easy enough to replace a Mac or PC operating system and all apps, utilities, and games. But what about music, photos, movies, and documents? Memminger recommends an online backup service.
Carbonite could use this incident as a promotional tool because if Catracchia had backed up her computer using Carbonite, resurrection of the last files would be a simple download to a new computer.
Compared to other online backup services, Carbonite is expensive. Other choices for Mac users include CrashPlan, Mozy, iBackup, iDrive, Backblaze, BackJack, and Arq for Amazon’s S3 service.
To test whether or not you need an off-premise backup, answer this question:
“What would you do if your Mac or PC died or was stolen? Everything is gone. What would you do?”
If you don’t know, or you’re officially in Worry Mode™, you need a better backup plan.
UPDATE: In a good ending to what could have been a tragic story, local police recovered Catracchia’s computers. All the data was safe.