While I wasn’t completely thrilled, I figured I would at least find out how well my backup strategy worked.  I use Time Machine for my home computers and have apparently been completing their tasks successfully.  However, I had never tried to restore from it before.

While I am now back up and running, I did learn about a few problems with my backup strategy that didn’t work seamlessly which I will pass on along with things that did work.

Perform Regular Backups

This is a no brainer, right? If you don’t backup routinely, you’ll lose data.  The aspect of this I never really thought much about is that psychologically, you will be most concerned about the data you were working with most recently. This also happens to be the stuff you will lose if you don’t regularly backup.  For me, this is the best part about Time Machine.  When it is enabled, you get hourly backups and you can’t configure it with any other frequency. Until you have a failure, this may seem overkill. When the failure happens, you will be very happy about this feature.

Make Offline Storage Part Of Your Backup

While your computer is down for the count and in need of restoration, you may need access to certain documents while this is occurring. Dropbox is a great solution for this and they offer 2 GB free storage. This amount of space is typically enough for document syncing. It also doubles as a convenient way to use these documents any time you are away from your computer.  A bonus is that since you get a chance to utilize your synced content before a failure happens, you can feel more confident that restoration will work.

Do NOT exclude your iTunes Library Files From Your Backup

If you have chosen to exclude your media from backup because you have stored it elsewhere such as a network share, etc. make sure to backup your iTunes library files. I made this mistake while choosing to exclude my Music folder from my backup and found out the hard way that this also means your iPod can’t sync files back to your library.  Apart from the hassle of re-importing the files, you lose playlists, ratings and more.  Further, if you exclude like I did, you may  lose apps you have as well.

Exclude VM’s From Backup

When configuring Time Machine, you have the option of excluding files from the backup. You might do this if you have a different backup strategy for certain files, and in the case of virtual machine disks, you really want a different strategy. Time Machine will determine if a file needs backed up based on modification date. Since virtual machine disks modify this date at every use and they are in the many-gigs size category, they would quickly fill your hard drive, unless of course you never used them.

Include System Files In Your Backup

I had read in some  articles the notion that it made sense to exclude these from your Time Machine backup, and I did. The idea was that you would save space because you had the installation disks. Big mistake. Firstly, relative to everything else they don’t take up that much space. Secondly, if you don’t back these up, you lose out on a very nice feature of the Leopard/Snow Leopard installation process, which is to restore from a Time Machine backup.  As it was, I needed to go through the installation process and then do my restore, which takes longer and is more manually involved.

It’s OK to Backup iPhoto/Aperture Libraries

Due to the same reasoning about backing up VM’s, one might be led to think that a large iPhoto library or Aperture library might not be a good idea to backup since they end up being large over time and change frequently for the typical user. While these look like very large single files to you in Finder, they are actually bundles. This means they may be expanded by you for examination and Time Machine does this too. The result is that it makes incremental updates within the bundle.

Secondary Backup For Important Stuff

When faced with a hard drive failure, you really reflect on what files are important. This is the stuff you should have a second copy of — just in case.  Redundant hard drives and optical are fine for this, but I found that while I was re-installing things, I considered how if a fire or theft occurred, I would need something offsite.

There are many offsite backup options such as Mozy, Carbonite, JungleDisk and DropBox that I suppose fill this purpose.

For me, the big thing is photos. I store my photos on SmugMug that offers unlimited storage with their plan. Unlike the other solutions, this is geared also for photo sharing, so the bonus is that I get some value out of it even before using it to restore photos.

If interested, use this code for $5  off at SmugMug: Z072MKPtbXNgA.

In short

• Time Machine works wonderfully well — don’t try to over think it to save disk space. Using the default settings would have worked much better for me.
• Complement your local backups with remote storage for immediate access and redundancy.

Rebecca surprised me with pictures she had taken of Katherine just a few weeks ago, ~6 months old. They are beautiful. I dare say we have a very photogenic child — and I admit to being biased

Katherine ~ 6 months

I am feeling extremely blessed today!

Carriage Ride in Charleston

The picture below is of the South Carolina Bank and Trust building. On the side of the building are some historical plaques explaining that it was a Freemason Lodge built in 1736.  For America, that’s pretty old.

Solomon's Lodge #1

I would love to have more time to tour the city and take more photos.

As it happened, we didn’t have a lot of time and had our 3 1/2 month old daughter with us.  We learned that the history was so well preserved that it really isn’t very friendly for strollers. Apart from the bumpiness of the old sidewalks, several areas, like going from The Battery Park to the path across the waterfront didn’t have a ramp at all.  We managed fine, but I did wonder about those in wheelchairs.

Since I spent a lot of time looking out for hazards to navigate the stroller through, I did notice that the sidewalks had metallic inserts in them to show the name of the street. I thought that was neat.

East Bay Street

Inlandia

After my Grandpa Jacobs died in 2008, my family started going through a lot of old family stuff.  There were old brochures for world’s fairs that were funny to look at in retrospect and there was also a pamphlet about some proposal called Inlandia. I don’t have that pamphlet, but as it was described to me, it was to be some sort of man made waterway that would tap into Lake Erie and wind its way through Ohio. I guess the idea was that since the Great Lakes were tied into the St. Lawrence Seaway, this could provide duty free trade routes through Ohio.

I found the picture above in some old photos that came from my Grandpa Curler.  Apparently they must have been promoting this idea in parades throughout Ohio — that or it was a local hair-brained scheme. According to my information, this photo was taken in 1958 and I can’t tell what town, but I would guess Rushsylvania, Ohio.  I would love to know more about this, but I can’t find anything about it online so far. If anyone knows more, please share.

Sewing and Football

I guess the answer to that question depends on how far you look back.  If we allow photos to tell a tale, then this one suggests that perhaps I would be an Ohio State Football player with a penchant for sewing. Obviously this would be to mend my own jersey because I am a bruiser.

TRS-80 fun

This photo above tells a different story. I am awaiting my turn to play a game on our TRS-80. While we did buy games to play, dad also bought us som magazines that often contained source code for games that we would punch in and save on an audio cassette tape also seen in the picture. I recall one of these was a downhill skiing game and another was a casino game in which I learned that real life gambling might be a problem for me. The book in front of the T.V. is Getting Started with Extended Color Basic, a simple reference manual.

While I don’t write games or even really play them much, I still code as an adult.

I’d be interested to see other photos of individuals that hint toward what they might do as an adult. I asked my wife if she had any that indicated that she might be an attorney someday but she isn’t aware of any.

Playing with Oceanic 815

In this photo I am playing with a toy airplane at my grandparents house as a child. I think it looks remarkably like Oceanic 815 from Lost. I seem to recall that I used to imagine that it crashed into a remote island and no one got hurt because the island had magical properties. Unfortunately, that’s all I remember.

Breaking The Rules

This photo of my Grandma Curler, Mom and Dad was taken on the General Harrison, a replica canal boat around the Piqua, Ohio area. I don’t know if they didn’t read the sign or were just being rebels.

Car Travel Has Changed

This is a scanned photo of my brother David (left) and myself (right) in either my parents’ or grandparents’ vehicles.  I don’t have the exact date, but I am going to guess it was around 1977.  Apart from the lack of car seats and what was probably just lap belts with maybe a booster seat for us, it is odd to see us that high above the front bench seat.

These were simpler, albeit more dangerous, times.