My Backup Strategy Is a External Drive and a Prayer

June 30, 2024

I keep meaning to set up a proper 3-2-1 backup strategy. I’ve read the blog posts. I’ve watched the talks. I know what I should do. I have a whole Notion page about it.

The Notion page is not backed up.

The Current Setup

My “backup strategy” is a 5-year-old external hard drive that lives in my desk drawer. It contains one folder called “important_stuff_FINAL” that I last updated approximately 14 months ago. The folder structure is:

important_stuff_FINAL/
├── important_stuff_FINAL_v2/
│   ├── ACTUALLY_IMPORTANT/
│   │   └── desktop.ini
│   └── old_photos/
│       └── 2019/
│           └── blurry_dog.jpg
└── notes.txt (empty)

That’s it. That’s the backup. If my house burns down, I’m down to whatever I have in my Google Drive from 2017 and a prayer.

The Rationalization

I tell myself I’ll set up BorgBackup to a remote VPS this weekend. I’ve been telling myself this for 18 months. At this point “this weekend” has become a mythical concept like “finishing a side project” or “reading the terms of service.”

I know I’m one hardware failure away from losing everything. I accept this the same way I accept death: by not thinking about it and hoping it happens to someone else first.

The Wake-Up Call

Last week my laptop made a clicking noise. I froze. My heart rate hit 140. I stared at the screen like it was a hostage situation.

The noise stopped. It was probably just the fan. But for 30 seconds I saw my life flash before my eyes. All those photos. All those projects. All those config files I swore I’d document.

I immediately started researching backup solutions. I found a good one. I bookmarked it. I’ll set it up this weekend.

Moral of the story: The most reliable backup strategy is crippling anxiety after a near-miss.