IT Commandment #1: Thou shalt back up thy data
Friday, July 20th, 2007Do not provide any service to any computer system (PC, website, PDA, whatever) that does not have a current backup. It doesn’t matter how simple or safe the operation is; anything in a computer can go wrong at any time, by pure chance, and if you happen to be working on the computer at the time, YOU will be blamed. Seriously, it does not matter how much they beg or threaten, or what your relationship with the person is; Murphy’s law doesn’t care. Oh, and undelete programs are snake oil. At best, they do nothing. At worst, they will overwrite any non-corrupt data with “recovered data” i.e., random bit strings.
That being said, encourage others to back up their data weekly, so that they may benefit from your technical aptitude when they are in need of it. Data loss can strike at any time, even when a system is off-line and unplugged and packed in Styrofoam and sealed in a vault and…
Also, when you work on a document, e-mail it to yourself. That way, when you have a night of flowing, creative stupidity, you can throw it away the next day and have something reasonable to work with.
Anyone want to guess how I spent my evening?