Background backups-way of Life

I was in Blacksburg last week and my laptop hard disk crashed after meeting my advisor. Karma :( Anyways, I was there stuck in Blacksburg with my Time Machine backup at home (in MD). My code was backed up regularly (not out of choice) only because my code needs to run on another machine for benchmarking. I lost a day installing everything on a spare laptop and then spent time figuring out everything I worked on before meeting my advisor. I had not obviously backed up before meeting him.

That made me look for a better solution. As usual, Manas had a better solution. His quote "Backup should be a background process. You shouldn't think of backing up. It has to be integrated in your work flow."I think I should I have an archive for his quotes that always seem to be apt for the situation. [:P]

I eventually got my Hard disk replaced at the local Apple store and restored everything from Time Machine. Manas suggested this solution, which IMHO is the best.

Step 1: Get yourself a Dropbox account (available for Mac, Linux and Windoze)

Step 2: Link your laptop to your account. You will see a Dropbox folder.

Step 3: On Linux and Macs: create a symbolic link to your folders you want to backup and place it in your Dropbox folder.

cd YourDropboxfolder

ln -s $HOME/Documents

ls -la

Documents -> $HOME/Documents

Sit back and relax. Everything gets backed up automatically.

Bonus point: refer your friend and get extra 250MB. Contact me if you want a referral.