How to lose backed-up data (Or: How to have a disappointing day)
I'm pretty thorough about backing up my data. Here's my typical routine: Any school-related files are in Dropbox, so they're available everywhere and backed up. A rsync script cron job makes a new "snapshot" of all my data to an internal 2TB drive inside my computer. The script runs every 8 hours and keeps the 3 most recent snapshots. The same rsync script run manually copies to an external, encrypted 2TB drive that I take to my office. So that's three copies of data in two different physical locations. Good strategy, right? But here's where things go wrong: Remove original boot drive and replace with SSD and fresh Ubuntu installation. Copy old files into /home on new drive. (Now I have 4 copies of data!) Instead of copying everything, directories are moved one-by-one to avoid importing cruft and unnecessary hidden files. Set up rsync script cron job again. (In 24 hours, all the old snapshots are gone. Now I'm down to 3 copies of data again.) ...