I have spent the last two days attempting to backup this server. Two days of my life! Things should not be this complicated, but security comes at a price. I have had very good luck throughout my career with technology, but bad luck catches up with everyone from time to time (recent problem).
Two situations cause me problems.
1) I purchase a lot of software and upgrades that I download. I tend to get excited about any new toy and if it works I forget to make a backup of the download. If I have a disk problem, there is no box on my shelf with the CD I need to reinstall.
2) I am now using software that is beyond my level of technical understanding. The MySQL database supporting this blog is a good example. I can write scripts to query a database, but I am not certain I even know where the data in the database is stored.
My solution is to backup the entire hard drive. I purchased a 160 Gigabyte LaCie drive for $160. One dollar for a gigabyte of storage! Back in the old days I purchased a box of 10 Elephant brand 5.25″ floppies for $25 and felt I had received a bargain. Each would hold approx 360 K.
Anyway, the idea was to back up the 5 gigabytes on this server on the new external hard drive. Should be simple. It takes several hours to transfer 5 gigs using the free software that came with the drive. I also figured out I had to log in as “root” or the copy program would ask me to certify that some system files could be copied. After a couple of hours of playing around, the drive crashed and hence the need for a second day.
MacMall was great about sending me a new drive and when I return the one that no longer works for not charging me twice. However, the salesman offered my a two year warranty for $40. Cindy says I have this very annoying habit of being very logical and having to discuss the logic of different situations with people who really are not interested. It took me about 15 minutes to explain to the salesperson that a $40 guarantee on a $160 product was stupid. What I could not afford to lose was the potentially hundreds of hours of labor it took to create the content stored on the drive. A new drive would be of limited value should the first drive crash because the costly component would be gone. Given this reality, I explained to the salesperson that it did not instill confidence to offer a guarantee that was such a high percentage of the product cost under such circumstances. Insurance rates are based on the frequency of bad events and it appeared the company either expected many bad events or was trying to make too much money. I could have just said “No thanks”, but what fun would that have been.
He was a nice guy and I hope was paid by the hour. Perhaps someone was actually monitoring my call as they claim is possible and was impressed with the employee’s tolerance.
