A word about backups - because if you lose your data and your ideas, you can’t communicate.

You need to realize that there are two types of backups.

The type is for file recovery. With file recovery backups you are mainly looking to recover individual items or folders that either got deleted, changed by accident, or overwritten. The main traits of this type of backup are they they are done often, can be accessed quickly, and can be restored quickly. Good examples of this are Apple’s new Time Machine and backup to .Mac accounts.

The second type of backup is for disaster recovery - The main two traits of this type are that they are complete backups so that you can recreate your entire system or line of business, and that they are stored off-site in case of devestating distruction such as fire, earthquake or flood. Here you are not so worries about speed as you are about security and validity. Tapes are often used for these backups. Tapes are slower, but can easily be shipped to some other city or even state for safe keeping.

In some ways, with some services, the two are starting to merge. The biggest example of this is a service that may create a local archive of your data and then ship it off via the Internet for longterm storage. Here you are doing a quick snapshot for file recover but then taking that snapshot off-line for the longer transfer portion that gives you the remote security.

There is lots of information on backups and recovery out there on the net, but the main thing is to make sure you are doing something. And to know what you are doing and trying to achieve. What I don’t want happening to you is to think you are heading in one direction only to find out that the way you were backing things up won’t serve that goal.