The update to the setup

In my last post, I described my current computer set up. I did so to encourage a mindfulness in my own practice (I am not ashamed of writing the previous sentence - I really do mean it). Forcing myself to inventory the systems that I use, made two things readily apparent to me. First, it is abundantly clear that not only am I profoundly dependent on Google products such as Google Drive, almost all of the access to my online world is tied together by my Gmail account. I aspire to, one day, be one among the proud and the few who are willing to use alternatives such as Owncloud and Fastmail just to establish a little more independence.

But before even considering this move, I first needed to address the second glaring problem that emerged from this self-reflection of my setup: I desperately needed a backup strategy. Massive loss was just a hard drive failure or malicious hack away.

As I write this, my old Windows XP computer is sending years worth of mp3s, documents and digital photos to my new WD Book which I bought on recommendation from Wirecutter. When that’s done, I’m going to copy over my back ups of my Google Drive contents, Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, and Photos that I generated earlier this week using Google Takeout.

I know myself well enough that I cannot rely on making regular manual updates to an external hard drive. So I have also invested in a family membership to CrashPlan. It took a loooong time for the documents of our family computers to be uploaded to the CrashPlan central server but now the service works unobtrusively in the background as new material accumulates. If you go this route of cloud-service backups, be aware that its likely that you are going to exceed your monthly data transfer limit for your ISP. Hopefully your ISP is as understanding as mine who waved the additional costs as this was a ‘first offense’ (Thank you Cogeco!)

My next step? I’m going to re-join the Archiveteam.

Because history is our future.