or, “Why I Don’t Bother With Whole-Disk Backups”
Well, not much. An occasional whole-disk image is a Good Thing, but I only want disk images of fresh installs that have been cleaned up and configured the way I want them. That way, if a hard drive borks on me, all I have to do is reimage the drive. Oh, my data, you may ask? *meh* I usually save new documents, downloads, etc., to three different locations off my computers—storage attached to another computer(s), an NAS and “cloud” storage. It’s extremely (extremely) rare that I cannot access my data. I sync up my “offsite” (off of my computers generating my data, and in the case of “cloud” storage, completely offsite) pretty often, so any I may have missed saving in all locations and any latest versions are all in place, juuuuuust in case.
Oh, and every now and then, I burn important data sets to DVD as well, just whenever I feel like it.
My applications? For anything not downloadable via Ninite (so, FRESH, up-to-date) I have reinstallation media and product keys for reinstallation.
This procedure, while perhaps a wee tad cumbersome, suits my personal computer use just fine. If a drive (or OS) borks on me, a little time reimaging a new drive is not a really big deal. Reinstalling applications take little time, and I have a fresh system, without the sometimes hinky cruft that tends to creep up on even the most paranoid OCPs among us. 🙂
The only really important thing is that my data is safe, or as safe as I can reasonably make it without taking extraordinary measures I’m just too lazy to take. *heh*
What’s your backup plan?
Yes, I do a fresh OS install every now and then, anyway. Sometimes because an OS has been updated too many times since the image I have for that computer, and it just saves time to use a OS installation disk that has the latest (or almost all the latest) updates slipstreamed, or in the case of ‘nix computers, new distros entirely. *shrugs* YMMV, of course, but for me, it saves time on any large (or large numbers of) updates.
Oh, application-specific configuration data? That’s almost entirely a concern only for my email client and browsers, but I have no problem spending maybe five minutes reconfiguring an email client, and my browsers are all automagically synced whenever I use them, across computers and across platforms, so no worries there, either. All I have to do is reinstall the browser (easy-peasy) and sign in for syncing and bob’s your uncle.