[fr]
Il y a deux mois, le 24 février, j'ai appuyé sur la mauvais bouton et effacé mon blog. Je ne savais pas de quand datait ma dernière sauvegarde.
Tout est bien qui finit bien pour moi (mais ça n'a pas été sans mal). Du coup, histoire d'encourager ceux qui, comme moi, sont un peu "mous de la sauvegarde", j'ai décrété que le 24 de chaque mois serait "Backup Awareness Day", ou "Journée de sensibilisation à la sauvegarde" (c'est mieux en Anglais, vous trouvez pas?)
Aujourd'hui, donc, on s'arrête un moment pour faire ces sauvegardes dont on aurait dû s'occuper depuis longtemps. On rebranche Time Machine. On va dans WordPress > Outils > Exporter. On fait un dump SQL de sa base de données. On met une copie des fichiers super importants sur lesquels on travaille depuis des semaines et qui n'existent que sur son ordinateur sur une clé USB. On motive ses voisins à faire de même. On écrit un article sur son blog pour rappeler à ses lecteurs de faire des sauvegardes. On met en place des systèmes automatisés, et l'on aide les autres à le faire.
Faire des sauvegardes une fois par mois, ce n'est pas suffisant. Mais c'est mieux que rien. Avec Backup Awareness Day, une fois par mois, prenons le temps de rappeler au monde que c'est important. Participez et taguez vos articles "backupawarenessday"!
[en]
Two months ago, on February 24th, I hit the wrong “Drop” button in PhpMyAdmin, resulting in the immediate deletion of the blog you’re reading. I didn’t know when I had last backed it up.
The story ends well, though it cost me (and others) many hours (days, actually) of work to get the whole of Climb to the Stars back online again.
I’ve always been careless about backups. Like many of you, probably. We can afford to be careless because accidents don’t happen very often, and as with Black Swans, we are under the mistaken belief that having been safe in the past will keep us safe in the future. Not so. As I like to repeat, the first time a disaster happens, well, it had never happened till then.
So, I’ve decided to declare the 24th of each month “Backup Awareness Day”. Here’s what it’s about:
- Back up your files.
- Back up your website.
- Blog about the importance of backing up (sharing tips, stories, advice).
- Tell your friends to back up.
- Help your friends back up.
- Put in place automatic backup systems.
Bottom-line: decrease the number of people who never back up, or back up so infrequently they’ll be in a real mess if things go wrong.
Now, perfectionism is the biggest enemy to getting things done. Backup Awareness Day does not mean that you have to do all this. Here are a few ideas to get your started (better a bad backup than no backup at all):
- If Time Machine (or any other regular backup system you use for your computer) has been telling you it hasn’t done a backup in ages, stop what you’re doing right now and plug it in.
- If you use WordPress, when was the last time you went to Tools > Export to make a quick backup? It’s not the best way to do it, but in my case, it saved CTTS.
- Do you use something like Mozy to have a remote backup of your most important files? Time to sign up, maybe.
- Are you working on important documents that exist only on your computer, which is never backed up? At the minimum, pick up a thumb drive and copy them onto it — or send yourself an e-mail with the files as attachment, if your e-mail is stored outside your computer (Gmail, for example).
- Do you have an automatic backup set up for your database or website? Set some time aside on Backup Awareness Day to figure out cron.
- When did you make the last dump of your MySQL database? Head over to PhpMyAdmin, or the command line (it’s
mysqldump --opt -u user -p databasename > my-dirty-backup.sql) - Do you have the backup thing all figured out? Write a post for your readers with a few tips or tutorials to help them along. (Tag your posts “backupawarenessday” — I thought about “BAD” but that wasn’t really optimal
)
I’m hoping to develop the concept more over the coming months. If you have ideas, get in touch, and take note of Backup Awareness Day for the month of May: Sunday 24th!
(Now stop reading and go do a few backups.)
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Digital Crumble
This is an excellent initiative! I backup my files at least once every ten days. I’ve found a cute and small external hard drive compatible with Time Machine (Mac) so I just plug, wait, and done. Plus, my computer reminds me to backup if I eventually forget about it after the 10th day. Painless and definitely relieving.
What about your blogs? How often do you back them up?
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I have an automatic backup of my blog every sunday morning, which is very useful. I also backup manually before and after any big changes I make (design, new category, new plugin) so that I won’t have anything messed up and lose days of work since last backup.
I use http://www.blogbackuponline.com/techrigy/ which takes an independent back-up n a daily or weekly basis.
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Get a Mac. Time machine makes backups so painless. Just configure it and forget it.
What great advice! I already have a Mac
thanks for escalating this,many times I have lost some documents until I started a back up . But for blog, i have not really found a good back up for all my articles.
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