Do you backup? Me neither! But we should! Your code and documents are extremely valuable and a little paranoia will go a long way in keeping your data safe. There are lots of solution for backups depending on how much data you have and how secure you want to get.

Backups can be simple:

• Burn your data to CD/DVD
• Sync your data with another local computer
• Copy your data to a removable storage device

These all provide duplication of data – but what if your house burns down? Ideally you want to do something locally (for quick data recovery) as well as something off-site.

• Take your CD or removable drive to your grandmothers
• Copy data off-site via tools like FTP or rsync
• Use a third party service

Moving physical data around is easy – but what if you drop your removable hard drive in the parking lot and at the same time your house is burning down? What if you need to recover something and Grandma is in Vegas? Remember, be paranoid about your data!

There are now several free and inexpensive services that allow you to easily do automated backups. You simply set it and forget it!

• Mozy
• Carbonite
• iDrive

Other things to consider:

Use your Gmail as a storage device. If you have a website somewhere you probably have lots of unused space available. Use a tool like SyncBack or rsync to automate copying files to your hosted space.

One additional thing to remember – occasionally try to restore your data! There is nothing worse that sitting back thinking your data is being safely backed up somewhere only to find out in a crisis that the data is corrupt. Schedule a recurring check and attempt a recovery and verify things are working as you expected.